On the Complexities and Limits of Market Organization

Richard Nelson

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: The last quarter-century has seen the rise of an almost religious belief in the efficacy of market organization of economic activity. While there are strong empirically supported reasons for a bias toward market organization, particularly considering the alternatives, there are many areas of economic, social, and political activity where simple market organization is highly problematic. When we use markets in these areas, market organization tends to be supplemented by regulation and other nonmarket structures. There are a number of areas where we fence out markets, and use other forms of organization and governance. There used to be in economics a strong understanding of the limits of market organization, and the complex structures that in many cases were needed if markets were to work well. The purpose of this essay is to rekindle this understanding.

Keywords: Markets; Regulation; Public Support. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-12-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2003-26.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2003/26

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).