Economics and Power
An Inquiry into Human Relations and Markets

This book widens the focus of economic analysis to examine how people affect each other within and around markets.

Randall Bartlett (Author)

9780521034623, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 December 2006

224 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.347 kg

'It successfully challenges the neoclassical mainstream on a broad range of basic issues involving power in market systems...For mainstream neoclassical economists who take the time to digest it, Bartlett's book must be most unsettling. For radical economists, even those already well-versed in the discourse on power, it is a valuable resource for deepening their understanding of both the weaknesses of mainstream theory and the strengths of their own alternative.' Eric Schutz, Review of Radical Political Economics

When a marketplace is considered in isolation, the implicit conclusion is that markets are a sufficient defence against the exercise of power. But market transactions do not occur in isolation: they are defined by rules, property rights, prior events and social values. This book widens the focus of traditional economic analysis to examine the ways in which people may affect each other within and around markets to give rise to real power. Using conventional neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour, the book begins by developing a workable concept of power, allowing for its presence in a variety of forms and degrees. It examines the conditions under which power would necessarily be absent from market transactions and those under which it would be possible. It considers the decision processes of potential exercisers and subjects of power to determine when the exercise and success of power would be rational.

Preface
Part I. The Need for New Theory: 1. Power in economics
Part II. An Economic Theory of Power: 2. An economic concept of power
3. Decision theory and power
4. The exercise of power as economic behaviour
Part III. Power and Markets: 5. Information, uncertainty and power
6. Power and organizations
7. Power in the employment relation
8. Rights and power
9. Value power
Part IV. Power Analysis in Economics: 10. Power and economics
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]