Markets and Power: The 21st Century Command Economy

By ignoring questions about power relations in markets, mainstream, neo-classically oriented economists conclude that there are no significant power structures operating in market systems. This book argues, to the contrary, that there are fundamental and systemic power structures -- monopoly, access to information or finance, employer power, etc. -- at work in market economies, which function to allocate the most important productive resources and capital investments, just as in state-controlled command economies. As an example, they show how the biggest firms at the hubs of financial "networks" wield a kind of "planning power" upon large numbers of relatively autonomous firms, not only upon those that belong to the networks but also on the many firms outside them that are also affected.

Eric A. Schutz is a professor of economics at Rollins College