We have become accustomed to economists and politicians talking about “market forces” as if they are immutable laws of the universe. But what exactly is “the market”? Originally an abstract idea from economic theory – the locus of supply and demand – it has come to inform the way we speak about our relationship to the economic system as a whole. Matthew Watson unpacks the concept to ask what does it really mean to allow ourselves to submit to market forces. And does economic theory really provide insights into the market institutions that shape our everyday life? In tackling these questions, the book provides a major contribution to a deeper appreciation of the dominant economic language of our time, challenging the idea that we can simply defer to the “logic of the market”.
Author(s): Matthew Watson
Publisher: Newcastle Upon Tyne/Agenda Publishing
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 182
Tags: Markets, Economics: Sociological Aspects, Economic Policy, Political Economy, Economic Systems, Microeconomics
Title page......Page 3
Copyright......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgements......Page 7
The power of “the market”......Page 9
The problem......Page 12
The thingification of “the market”......Page 14
The dethingification of “the market”......Page 17
Politicians talking themselves down......Page 20
The structure of the book......Page 22
Introduction......Page 25
The market as a descriptive concept......Page 28
The market as an analytical concept......Page 32
The market as a formalist concept......Page 34
The market concept in the economics textbooks......Page 36
Conclusion......Page 43
Introduction......Page 45
The impartial spectator and the sympathy procedure......Page 48
Market coordination from Smith’s perspective......Page 54
Smith and the language of “demand and supply”......Page 59
Conclusion......Page 64
Introduction......Page 69
Marshall and his predecessors......Page 72
Disagreements amongst Marshall’s predecessors......Page 79
Controversies surrounding the diagram’s underpinning behavioural assumptions......Page 84
Conclusion......Page 89
Introduction......Page 93
Walras’s early studies of general equilibrium......Page 97
The road to Arrow and Debreu’s existence theorem......Page 102
The economics of the formalist market concept......Page 107
Conclusion......Page 113
Introduction......Page 115
The deification of “the market”......Page 118
The automatic pilots of “the market”......Page 123
The red herrings of “the market”......Page 128
Conclusion......Page 134
What I have done......Page 137
What is left to do......Page 140
“The market” and distributional politics......Page 144
Final words......Page 149
Glossary......Page 151
Bibliography......Page 157
Index......Page 175
