Price Takers' Plenty in a Model of Pure Capitalism.

Scitovsky, Tibor

Bibliographic data

Collected items

Document type:: Collected items

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Price Takers' Plenty in a Model of Pure Capitalism.

Author:: Scitovsky, Tibor

Scope:: Kopie eines Typoskripts, 27 Blätter, mit handschriftlicher Korrektur und Korrektur mit Korrekturfolie, Paginierung von 5.1-5.20 und von 3.21-3.26

Year of publication:: 1983

Source material date:: [November 1983]

Language:: English

Note:: Draft.

Related work:: Scitovsky, Tibor: Pricetakers' Plenty: A Neglected Benefit of Capitalism. In: Kyklos, Dec 1985, Vol. 38 Issue 4, S. 517-516

JEL Classification:: D41 [Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Perfect Competition]

Shelfmark:: S/M.33.7

Access:: Free access

5.6 secondary transactions with its fringe benefits into the bargain. The fact that a larger part of the public continues to buy the package and its fringe benefits reveals their preference for those benefits and proves that they consider the attractions of a buyers* market well worth their cost. One usually thinks of a buyers* market as the consequence of the sellers* having an excess supply of goods they want to get rid of. The buyers* market I am talking about is the consequence of the sellers' being price makers and as such creating a gap between price and MC. The two kinds of buyers' markets are almost identical, because — price policy apart — price makers on the selling side always behave as if they had an excess supply to get rid of. The mutual benefit price makers and price takers derive from their asymmetrical market relationship should perhaps warn us to guard our language. Monopolistic exploitation is standard terminology; but when it creates mutual benefits, it may be better to speak of the price maker's monopoly profit and the price takers' monopoly benefit, leaving it open whether the latter exists and vrhether it is worth its cost. For the fringe benefits are not a standard feature of the asymmetrical market. They can be few or many; they are more evident in times of depression than in times of prosperity; . they are not always separable from the primary transaction; and they can be completely absent. The last-mentioned eventuality is the most important; and it is explained by the fact that the seller can have cheaper ways of finding an outlet for his excess supplies than nonprice competition.

Collected items

Cite and reuse

Collected items

Image

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation