MARKET

SIMONA FALLOCCO
2014 BANKPEDIA REVIEW  
The market is a complex network of (voluntary, peaceful and mutually beneficial) economic exchanges which, without being planned in advance, is the product of the social cooperation. In this respect, it is the social institution par excellence as a web of reciprocal dependence between actors who owe the possibility to pursue their own (economic) projects to the matching of the intentions and expectations that determine the actions of different individuals. The market system owes its origins to
more » ... series of circumstances occurred in late-Middle Age, a time characterized by the lack of a strong central power and by the birth of civil society, that society whose subjects benefit from a certain amount of liberty and rights while having the free use of their goods, their work, and their private life. There is, therefore, a historically inextricable link between the market, modernity and freedom: the "market economy" is thus equivalent, first and foremost, to an economic freedom and the economic freedom is the means to a higher end, i.e. freedom tout court. Market and Economic Rationality According to Max Weber the market is "the archetype of all rational social action" (Weber, 1978, vol. I, p. 635). In Weber's opinion "[a] market may be said to exist wherever there is competition, even if only unilateral, for opportunities of exchange among a plurality of potential parties. Their physical assemblage in one place, as in 8
doi:10.14612/fallocco_2_2014 fatcat:z4ucjv2buzbddgo2eiweks5np4