Making a Market
The Institutional Transformation of an African Society

This 1993 book analyses the process by which the market was introduced into the economy of a group of Kenyan pastoralists.

Jean Ensminger (Author)

9780521420600, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 November 1992

230 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.6 cm, 0.49 kg

"This book makes an important contribution to the literature on development, institutions and the understanding of change in Africa." Mwangi wa Githinji, University of California, Riverside, in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Economists have devoted considerable effort to explaining how a market economy functions, but they have given a good deal less attention to explaining how a market economy is formed. In Making a Market, Jean Ensminger analyses the process by which the market was introduced into the economy of a group of Kenyan pastoralists. Professor Ensminger employs new institutional economic analysis to assess the impact of new market institutions on production and distribution, with particular emphasis on the effect of institutions on decreasing transaction costs over time. This 1993 study traces the effects of increasing commercialisation on the economic well-being of individual households, rich and poor alike, over considerable time and analyses the process by which institutions themselves are transformed as a market economy develops.

1. A proper marriage: new institutional economic anthropology
2. Transaction costs: the history of trade among the Orma
3. Distribution of the gains from trade
4. Agency theory: patron-client relations as a form of labor contracting
5. Property rights: dismantling the commons
6. Collective action: from community to state
7. Conclusion: ideology and the economy.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]