Market Fundamentalism

The belief that markets are an inevitable and desirable feature of capitalism and that efficient and transparent market making enables capital formation and general public prosperity.

Often coincides with the belief that market manipulation, asymmetric information, and cartels in markets are undesirable because these phenomenon destroy trust in markets and inhibit price formation.

The strong form of this ideology coincides with the so-called Friedman Doctrine that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits by any means possible.

References

  1. Janeway, William H. Doing capitalism in the innovation economy: Markets, speculation and the state. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  2. Fama, Eugene F. "Efficient capital markets: A review of theory and empirical work." The journal of Finance 25, no. 2 (1970): 383-417.
  3. Akerlof, George A. "The market for “lemons”: Quality uncertainty and the market mechanism." In Uncertainty in economics, pp. 235-251. Academic Press, 1978.
  4. Hart, Oliver, and Bengt Holmström. "The theory of contracts." In Advances in economic theory: Fifth world congress, vol. 1. 1987.
  5. Fama, Eugene F., and Kenneth R. French. "Size, value, and momentum in international stock returns." Journal of financial economics 105, no. 3 (2012): 457-472.
  6. Jarrow, Robert A. "Market manipulation, bubbles, corners, and short squeezes." Journal of financial and Quantitative Analysis 27, no. 3 (1992): 311-336.
  7. Friedman, Milton. "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." In Corporate ethics and corporate governance, pp. 173-178. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.