Marc F. Bellemare

I wrote two posts on the topic of markets last week. The posts were parts 1 and 2 of a longer post titled “Beyond the Market,” in which I highlighted some interesting facts and paradoxes about markets.

In response to those one of those paradoxes, Saleem writes:

I liked that bit:

‘It is always good, however, to keep in mind that those of us who live in industrialized countries — those of us who live in North America and in Western Europe, especially — are much less in contact with markets than some of us would like to believe.’

Would be cool to see that developed a bit more…”

So what did I mean when I said that we come in contact with the market much less than some people would have you believe? Continue reading →

Yesterday, I discussed Robert Neuwirth’s book Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, which emphasizes the activities of “illegal street vendors and unlicensed roadside hawkers.”

I concluded by noting how that brought to mind a few conversations I’d recently had with a friend who was observing how, relative to Asia and Africa, few people actually knew how to hustle in America nowadays.

In my Law, Economics, and Organization seminar, I use an old textbook by Milgrom and Roberts. By “old,” I mean that it was the textbook used to teach economics of organization when I was in college. By “old,” I mean that the book is as old as some of my younger students. But I use it because it’s a classic, and because it covers just about everything one needs to know about law and economics and the economics of organization.

Market Paradoxes

In their book, Milgrom and Roberts highlight a first important paradox of markets (I am paraphrasing): Continue reading →

I am teaching my Law, Economics, and Organization class this semester. The class is for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, so there is a good variety of backgrounds and interests among the students who enroll in it.

Since the class is a seminar, I spend about half the time teaching, with the other half spent discussing specific papers.

Last Friday, in the context of the module on relational contracts, we discussed two classic papers. The first is Greif’s (1993) paper, in which he discusses the various mechanisms used by 11th-century Jewish merchants around the Mediterranean to sustain long-distance trade. The second is Bernstein’s (1992) investigation of how diamond traders choose to “opt out” of the legal system by developing their own extra-legal institutions.

Hustle and Flow

In the spirit of both articles, I wanted to link to a somewhat dated article in Wired,  a Q&A with Robert Neuwirth, who published a book titled Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy last fall. Here is an excerpt: Continue reading →