market

—marketer, n.

/mahr"kit/, n.

1. an open place or a covered building where buyers and sellers convene for the sale of goods; a marketplace: a farmers' market.

2. a store for the sale of food: a meat market.

3. a meeting of people for selling and buying.

4. the assemblage of people at such a meeting.

5. trade or traffic, esp. as regards a particular commodity: the market in cotton.

6. a body of persons carrying on extensive transactions in a specified commodity: the cotton market.

7. the field of trade or business: the best shoes in the market.

8. demand for a commodity: an unprecedented market for leather.

9. a body of existing or potential buyers for specific goods or services: the health-food market.

10. a region in which goods and services are bought, sold, or used: the foreign market; the New England market.

11. current price or value: a rising market for shoes.

12. See stock market.

13. at the market, at the prevailing price in the open market.

14. in the market for, ready to buy; interested in buying: I'm in the market for a new car.

15. on the market, for sale; available: Fresh asparagus will be on the market this week.

v.i.

16. to buy or sell in a market; deal.

17. to buy food and provisions for the home.

v.t.

18. to carry or send to market for disposal: to market produce every week.

19. to dispose of in a market; sell.

[1100-1150; ME, late OE < VL *marcatus, L mercatus trading, traffic, market]

Syn. 19. vend, merchandise, peddle.

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I

Means by which buyers and sellers are brought into contact with each other and goods and services are exchanged.

The term originally referred to a place where products were bought and sold; today a market is any arena, however abstract or far-reaching, in which buyers and sellers make transactions. The commodity exchanges in London and New York, for example, are international markets in which dealers communicate by telephone and computer links as well as through direct contact. Markets trade not only in tangible commodities such as grain and livestock but also in financial instruments such as securities and currencies. Classical economists developed the theory of perfect competition, in which they imagined free markets as places where large numbers of buyers and sellers communicated easily with each other and traded in commodities that were readily transferable; prices in such markets were determined only by supply and demand. Since the 1930s, economists have focused more often on the theory of imperfect competition, in which supply and demand are not the only factors that influence the operations of the market. In imperfect competition the number of sellers or buyers is limited, rival products are differentiated (by design, quality, brand name, etc.), and various obstacles hinder new producers' entry into the market.

II

(as used in expressions)

free market economy

bear market

black market

bull market

market research

money market

open market operation

over the counter market

stock market

Stock Market Crash of 1929

the Common Market

direct mail marketing

marketing board

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▪ economics

Introduction

      a means by which the exchange of goods and services takes place as a result of buyers and sellers being in contact with one another, either directly or through mediating agents or institutions.

      Markets in the most literal and immediate sense are places in which things are bought and sold. In the modern industrial system, however, the market is not a place; it has expanded to include the whole geographical area in which sellers compete with each other for customers. Alfred Marshall (Marshall, Alfred), whose Principles of Economics (first published in 1890) was for long an authority for English-speaking economists, based his definition of the market on that of the French economist A. Cournot (Cournot, Antoine-Augustin):

Economists understand by the term Market, not any particular market place in which things are bought and sold, but the whole of any region in which buyers and sellers are in such free intercourse with one another that the prices of the same goods tend to equality easily and quickly.

      To this Marshall added:

The more nearly perfect a market is, the stronger is the tendency for the same price to be paid for the same thing at the same time in all parts of the market.

      The concept of the market as defined above has to do primarily with more or less standardized commodities, for example, wool or automobiles. The word market is also used in contexts such as the market for real estate or for old masters; and there is the “labour market,” although a contract to work for a certain wage differs from a sale of goods. There is a connecting idea in all of these various usages—namely, the interplay of supply and demand.

      Most markets consist of groups of intermediaries between the first seller of a commodity and the final buyer. There are all kinds of intermediaries, from the brokers in the great produce exchanges down to the village grocer. They may be mere dealers with no equipment but a telephone, or they may provide storage and perform important services of grading, packaging, and so on. In general, the function of a market is to collect products from scattered sources and channel them to scattered outlets. From the point of view of the seller, dealers channel the demand for his product; from the point of view of the buyer, they bring supplies within his reach.

      There are two main types of markets for products, in which the forces of supply and demand operate quite differently, with some overlapping and borderline cases. In the first, the producer offers his goods and takes whatever price they will command; in the second, the producer sets his price and sells as much as the market will take. In addition, along with the growth of trade in goods, there has been a proliferation of financial markets, including securities exchanges and money markets.

The market in economic doctrine and history

Market theory

The abstract nature of traditional market theory

      The key to the modern concept of the market may be found in the famous observation of the 18th-century British economist Adam Smith (Smith, Adam) that “The division of labour depends upon the extent of the market.” He foresaw that modern industry depended for its development upon an extensive market for its products. The factory system developed out of trade in cotton textiles, when merchants, discovering an apparently insatiable worldwide market, became interested in increasing production in order to have more to sell. The factory system led to the use of power to supplement human muscle, followed in turn by the application of science to technology, which in an ever-accelerating spiral has produced the scope and complexity of modern industry.

      The economic theory of the late 19th century, which is still influential in academic teaching, was, however, concerned with the allocation of existing resources between different uses rather than with technical progress. This theory was highly abstract. The concept of the market was most systematically worked out in a general equilibrium system developed by the French economist Léon Walras (Walras, Léon), who was strongly influenced by the theoretical physics of his time. His system of mathematical equations was ingenious, but there are two serious limitations to the mechanical analogy upon which they were based: it omitted the factor of time—the effect upon peoples' present behaviour of their expectations about the future; and it ignored the consequences for the human beings concerned of the distribution of purchasing power among them. Though economists have always admitted the abstract nature of the theory, they generally have accepted the doctrine that the free play of market forces tended to bring about full employment and an optimum allocation of resources. On this view, unemployment could only be caused by wages being too high. This doctrine was still influential in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Modifications of the theory

      The change in view that was to become known as the Keynesian Revolution was largely an escape to common sense, as opposed to abstract theory. In a private-enterprise economy, investment in industrial installations and housing construction is aimed at profitability in the future. Because investment therefore depends upon expectations, unfavourable expectations tend to fulfill themselves—when investment outlay falls off, workers become unemployed; incomes fall, purchases fall, unemployment spreads to the consumer goods industries, and receipts are reduced all the more. The operation of the market thus generates instability. The market may also generate instability in an upward direction. A high level of effective demand leads to a scarcity of labour; rising wages raise both costs of production and incomes so that there is a general tendency to inflation.

      While the English economist John Maynard Keynes (Keynes, John Maynard) was attacking the concept of equilibrium in the market as a whole, the notion of equilibrium in the market for particular commodities was also being undermined. Traditional theory had conceived of a group of producers as operating in a perfect market for a single commodity; each produced only a small part of the whole supply; for each, the price was determined by the market; and each maximized its profits by selling only as much as would make marginal cost equal to price—that is to say, only so much that to produce a little more would add more to costs than it would to proceeds. Each firm worked its plant up to capacity—i.e., to the point where profitability was limited by rising costs. This state of affairs, known as “perfect competition,” is quite contrary to the general run of business experience, particularly in bad times when under-capacity working is prevalent. A theory of imperfect competition was invented to reconcile the traditional theory with under-capacity working but was attacked as unrealistic. The upshot was a general recognition that strict profit maximizing is impossible in conditions of uncertainty; that prices of manufactures are generally formed by adding a margin to direct costs, large enough to yield a profit at less than capacity sales; and that an increase in capacity generally has to be accompanied by a selling campaign to ensure that it will be used at a remunerative level.

      Once it is recognized that competition is never perfect in reality, it becomes obvious that there is great scope for individual variations in the price policy of firms. No precise generalization is possible. The field is open for study of what actually happens, and exploration is going on. Meanwhile, however, textbook teaching often continues to seek refuge in the illusory simplicity of the traditional theory of market behaviour.

The historical development of markets

      History and anthropology provide many examples of economies based neither on markets nor on commerce. An exchange of gifts between communities with different resources, for example, may resemble trade, particularly in diversifying consumption and encouraging specialization in production, but subjectively it has a different meaning. Honour lies in giving; receiving imposes a burden. There is competition to see who can show the most generosity, not who can make the biggest gain. Another kind of noncommercial exchange was the payment of tribute, or dues, to a political authority, which then distributed what it had collected. On this basis, great, complex, and wealthy civilizations have arisen in which commerce was almost entirely unknown: the network of supply and distribution was operated through the administrative system. Herodotus remarked that the Persians had no marketplaces.

      The distinguishing characteristic of commerce is that goods are offered not as a duty or for prestige or out of neighbourly kindness but in order to acquire purchasing power. It is clearly a convenience to all parties to have a single generally established currency-commodity. Once a commodity is acceptable as money, its use to store purchasing power overshadows its use for its original purpose; it ceases to be a commodity like any other and becomes the very embodiment of value.

The origin of markets

      Markets as centres of commerce seem to have had three separate points of origin. The first was in rural fairs (fair). A typical cultivator fed his family and paid the landlord and the moneylender from his chief crop. He had sidelines that provided salable products, and he had needs that he could not satisfy at home. It was then convenient for him to go to a market where many could meet to sell and buy.

      The second point was in service to the landlords. rent, essentially, was paid in grain; even when it was translated into money, sales of grain were necessary to supply the cultivator with funds to meet his dues. Payment of rent was a one-way transaction, imposed by the landlord. In turn, the landlord used the rents to maintain his warriors, clients, and artisans, and this led to the growth of towns as centres of trade and production. An urban class developed with a standard of life enabling its members to cater to each other as well as to the landlords and officials.

      The third, and most influential, origin of markets was in international trade. From early times, merchant adventurers (the Phoenicians, the Arabs) risked their lives and their capital in carrying the products of one region to another. The importance of international trade for the development of the market system was precisely that it was carried on by third parties. Within a settled country, commercial dealings were restrained by considerations of rights, obligations, and proper behaviour. In medieval Europe, for example, dealings were regulated in the main by the concept of the “just price,” that is, a system of valuations that assured the producers and merchants an income sufficient to maintain life at a level suited to their respective positions in society. But in trade in which the dealer is not subject to any obligation at either end, no holds are barred; purely commercial principles have free play. It was in trade (for instance, the export of English wool to the weavers of Italy) that the commercial principle undermined feudal conceptions of rights and duties. As Adam Smith observed, a great leap occurred when trade released the forces of industrial production.

      Throughout history the relations between the trader and the producer have changed with the development of technique and with changes in the economic power of the parties. The 19th century was the heyday of the import–export merchant. Traders from a metropolitan country could establish themselves in a foreign centre, become experts on its needs and possibilities, and deal with a great variety of producers and customers, on a relatively small scale with each. With the growth of giant corporations, the scope of the merchant narrowed; his functions were largely taken over by the sales departments of the industrial concerns. Nowadays it is common to hold international fairs at which industrial products are displayed for inspection by customers, a grand and glorified version of the village market; the business, however, consists in placing orders rather than buying on the spot and carrying merchandise home. The function of the independent wholesaler, like that of the merchant, has declined as great retail businesses have grown to a scale whereby they can deal directly with manufacturers; but specialized exchanges for primary commodities are still important.

Markets under socialism

      Markets are essential to the free enterprise system; they grew and spread along with it. The propensity “to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” (in Adam Smith's words) was exalted into a principle of civilization by the doctrine of laissez-faire, which taught that the pursuit of self-interests by the individual would be to the benefit of society as a whole. In the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and other Socialist countries, a different kind of economy existed and a different ideology was dominant. There were two interlocking systems in the economy of the Soviet Union: one for industry and one for agriculture; and the same pattern was followed, with variations, in the other Socialist countries. Industrially, all equipment and materials were owned by the state, and production was directed according to a central plan. In theory, payments to workers were thought of as their share of the total production of the economy; in practice, however, the system of wages was very much like that in capitalist industry except that rates as a rule were set by decree and the managers of enterprises had little scope for bargaining. Workers might move around looking for jobs, but there was no “labour market” in the capitalist sense. Materials and equipment were distributed among enterprises by the state planning offices. (Faulty planning gave rise to intermediaries who operated between enterprises, but this is not at all the same thing as the highly developed markets in materials, components, and equipment that exist under capitalism.)

      Consumption goods, on the other hand, were distributed to Soviet households through a retail market. Though some Socialist idealists, regarding buying and selling as the essence of capitalism, have advocated that money should be abolished altogether, in a large community it has proved to be most convenient to provide incomes in the form of generalized purchasing power and to allow each to choose what he pleases from whatever goods are available. Classical economists usually assert that the advantage of the retail market system is that it runs itself without excessive regulation; consumers who go shopping are in charge of their own money and need account to no one for what they do with it. Retail markets in the Soviet economy differed from those in capitalist economies in that, while in both systems the buyer is in this sense a principal, the seller in the Soviet model was an agent. Retailers and manufacturers all served as agents of the same authority—the central plan. Rather than making it their business to woo and cajole the customer, sellers threw supplies into the shops in a somewhat arbitrary way and customers would search for what they wanted.

      Soviet agriculture was organized on principles quite different from those operative for manufacturing. Collective farms (kolkhoz), though managed in an authoritarian way, were like cooperatives (cooperative) in which members shared in the income of their farm in respect to the “work points” each could earn. The value of a work point was affected by the prices set for the products of the farm, and these were politically, rather than only economically, determined. In the Western industrial economies, there is also a political element involved in the setting of agricultural prices; generally the problem here is to prevent excess production from driving prices too low. For the Soviets, the problem was the opposite. There, agricultural output failed to expand rapidly enough to keep pace with the requirements of the growing industrial labour force, and prices were therefore kept down so that they would not be unfavourable to the industrial sector. At the same time, individual members of the collective farms were permitted to sell the produce of their household plots on a free market. In this specific market, the peasant was as much a principal as the buyer.

      In China, cooperative farms established after 1949 were much more genuinely cooperatives than were those in the Soviet Union, and trade with the cities in China is organized through a kind of Socialist wholesaling. City authorities place contracts with neighbouring farms, specifying prices, varieties, quantities, and delivery dates, and then direct the supplies to retail outlets, which are part of the Socialist economy. A similar system controls trade in manufactured consumer goods. Through the retail shops, the authorities monitor demand and guide supply as far as possible to meet it by the contracts that they place with the Socialist manufacturers. By adapting the wholesale trade to its own requirements, the Chinese economy seems to have avoided some of the difficulties that the Soviets encountered.

      An example of socialism without a formal market was seen in the early days of the cooperative settlements known as kibbutzim (kibbutz) in Israel, where cultivators shared the proceeds of their work without any distinction of individual incomes. (Because a kibbutz could trade with the surrounding market economy, its members were not confined to consuming only the produce of their own soil.) At the outset some of the kibbutzim carried the objection to private property so far that a man who gave a shirt to the laundry received back just some other shirt. But to dispense altogether with market relationships is apparently possible only in a small community in which all share a common ideal, and the austere standards of the original kibbutzim have softened somewhat with growing prosperity; but they still maintain a small-scale example of economic efficiency without commercial incentives.

Commodity markets

      The general run of agricultural (agricultural economics) commodities is produced under competitive conditions by relatively small-scale cultivators scattered over a large area. The final purchasers are also scattered, and centres of consumption are distant from regions of production. The dealer, therefore, since he is indispensable, is in a stronger economic position than the seller. This situation is markedly true when the producer is a peasant who lacks both commercial knowledge and finance so that he is obliged to sell as soon as his harvest comes in; it is true also, though to a lesser extent, of the capitalist plantation for which the only source of earnings is a particular specialized product. In this kind of business, both demand and supply are said to be inelastic in the short run—that is, a fall in price does not have much effect in increasing purchases and a rise in price cannot quickly increase supplies. Supplies are subject to natural variations, weather conditions, pests, and so forth; and demand varies with the level of activity in the centres of industry and with changes in tastes and technical requirements. Under a regime of unregulated competition such markets are, therefore, tormented with continual fluctuations in prices and volume of business. Though dealers may mitigate this to some extent by building up stocks when prices are low and releasing them when demand is high, such buying and selling often turns into speculation, which tends to exacerbate the fluctuations.

      The behaviour of primary commodity markets is a serious matter when whole communities depend upon a single commodity for income or for employment and wages. The agricultural communities that form part of an industrial economy are therefore generally sheltered from the operation of supply and demand by government regulations of various types, price supports, or tariff protection. Though some attempts have been made to control world commodity markets, these are generally more talk than performance. Some nations, Australia for example, have been able to make enough profit from primary commodity exports to attract capital into the development of industry; but most of the so-called developing countries find their export earnings insecure and insufficient. Their spokesmen complain that the world market system operates in favour of the industrialized nations.

Joan Violet Robinson

Additional Reading

Glenn G. Munn, F.L. Garcia, and Charles J. Woelfel, Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance, 9th ed., rev. and expanded (also published as The St. James Encyclopedia of Banking & Finance, 1991), provides comprehensive definitions, many with bibliographies. Edward I. Altman and Mary Jane McKinney (eds.), Handbook of Financial Markets and Institutions, 6th ed. (1987), is a thorough compilation. Detailed information on a variety of markets is provided in Francis A. Lees and Maximo Eng, International Financial Markets: Development of the Present System and Future Prospects (1975), a descriptive treatment; Charles R. Geisst, A Guide to the Financial Markets, 2nd ed. (1989), for the general reader; Frank J. Fabozzi and Frank G. Zarb, Handbook of Financial Markets: Securities, Options, and Futures, 2nd ed. (1986); and Perry J. Kaufman, Handbook of Futures Markets: Commodity, Financial, Stock Index, and Options (1984), including the history, regulation, and mechanics of futures trading. Further discussion of financial futures is found in Mark J. Powers and Mark G. Castelino, Inside the Financial Futures Markets, 3rd ed. (1991), an explanation of the exchanges and their functions; and Nancy H. Rothstein and James M. Little (eds.), The Handbook of Financial Futures: A Guide for Investors and Professional Financial Managers (1984), a discussion of the market's development, organization, and regulation. The first chapter of Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776, reprinted frequently), contains his famous discussion of the division of labour. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 9th ed., 2 vol. (1961), conveys his approach to the market. The development of the general equilibrium approach to markets by Leon Walrus and others is well recounted by Joseph A. Schumpeter, A History of Economic Analysis, ed. by Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (1954). The best short introduction to the Keynesian Revolution is by Michal Kalecki, Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles, 1933–1939 (1966; originally published in Polish, 1962). These essays were written before the publication of the great work of John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935, reissued 1991). A critical account of the theory of imperfect competition is presented in the preface to Joan Robinson, The Economics of Imperfect Competition, 2nd ed. (1969, reissued 1976). A slightly different approach is that of Edward Hastings Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, 8th ed. (1962). Economies without markets are described in Karl Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, ed. by George Dalton (1968), a collection of essays of great interest and originality. Andrew Shonfield, Modern Capitalism (1965, reissued 1978), studies the ways in which various countries have adapted their economic administration to modern requirements. A more critical view of modern capitalism is that of John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, 4th ed. (1985). A Marxist view is set forth by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (1966). A summary of the attempts at economic reform in the then-existent Soviet Union and other countries with socialist economies is given in Michael Ellman, Economic Reform in the Soviet Union (1969). The economic problems of the poor countries are examined in Gunnar Myrdal, The Challenge of World Poverty (1970), a continuation of his monumental work Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, 3 vol. (1968), also available in an abridged edition (1971). The classic appraisal of the market from the standpoint of social welfare is A.C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 4th ed. (1962). Appraisals of welfare economics include I.M.D. Little, A Critique of Welfare Economics, 2nd ed. (1957, reissued 1970); J. de V. Graaff, Theoretical Welfare Economics (1957, reissued 1975); and Maurice Dobb, On Economic Theory and Socialism (1955, reissued 1972). Thorstein Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays (1919, reprinted 1990), most directly expresses his critique of the market ideology.

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