ABSTRACT
Markets are fundamental institutions of modern society, and have since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, been held responsible for static efficiency resulting from specialization (e.g. McMillan 2002) as well as for dynamic efficiency caused by innovation (e.g. Baumol 2002). This importance of markets for economic development has led one author (Studer 2008: 395) to argue that ‘most economists and economic historians would agree that efficient market structures are both evidence of economic sophistication and prosperity as well as prerequisites for further economic growth’. Markets appear very early in recorded history (see the various contributions on the Babylonian economy in this volume), have obviously evolved over time, and have come to dominate many forms of social and economic interaction in recent times. Yet what is missing is a broad overview of the way in which markets changed in the very long run; in particular, there is hardly any relevant literature trying to compare ‘early’ forms of market exchange, as they came into existence during antiquity, with markets that functioned during the ‘modern’ period (from the late Middle Ages to the present).
