Overview
- Puts the debate on market criticism into a context of the history of economic thought
- Analyses some of the earliest debates such as Plato and Aristotle
- Proposes four ways to cope with flawed markets
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
In this work, Rutherford reviews why Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises and others praised economic markets, with a view to understanding, in contrast, historical attacks on markets dating as far back as Aristotle. The market has long been criticized as an inappropriate method of allocation, encouraging market participants to misbehave for the sake of personal gain, and creating an impersonal new market culture. This book traces how such attacks have become more vociferous in recent centuries, especially with the rise of socialism. Most recently the critique has broadened to include toxic markets and the excessive marketization of activities hitherto external to the market. Analysing these major criticisms, as well as the value of regulation, utopias and virtue ethics as a means of avoiding future suspicions of markets, the author lays the groundwork for the reader’s own assessment of the arguments, and concludes by posing suggestions of how best we might cope with flawed markets in the future.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Donald Rutherford is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, having previously worked as an investment analyst and financial journalist in the City of London. He has taught a range of courses over the years, including labour economics, the trade cycle, economic policy and comparative economic systems. Rutherford has drawn on this breadth of expertise to write a dictionary of economics, first published in 1992. He currently specialises in the history of economic thought.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Suspicions of Markets
Book Subtitle: Critical Attacks from Aristotle to the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Donald Rutherford
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40808-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-40807-1Published: 19 October 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-82189-4Published: 16 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-40808-8Published: 06 October 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 194
Topics: History of Economic Thought/Methodology, Economic History, Macroeconomics/Monetary Economics//Financial Economics, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of the Social Sciences