Markets, Evaluations and Rankings

»Märkte, Bewertungen und Klassifizierungen«. Starting from the
problem of economic coordination, this article defines markets as a social
structure for the exchange of rights in which offers are evaluated and priced,
and compete with one another. It identifies temporality, the roles of buyers and
sellers, the voluntary nature of trade, property rights and competition as key
features distinguishing markets from trade and other forms of economic coordination.
In order to function, markets require a shared understanding of a
product, a common culture as rules of behavior and an agreement over the economic
value of an offer. Finally, the article distinguishes between “fixed” and
“switch-role markets” to show that it is necessary to speak of markets in plural.
Keywords: market order; definition of markets; evaluation.
Introduction