Market forces - Adam Smith's "invisible hand" - have never operated unimpeded in any economic system. As this book shows, even the successful merchant communities of early modern Europe were directed by the conscious plans of individuals and associations; the archetypal markets were imperfect. Pressure groups, city and state bureaucracies, princes and kings all sought to influence economic activity. This book is an account by leading European economic and urban historians of the methods these actors used and of the way they influenced each other.
- ISBN10 0718513479
- ISBN13 9780718513474
- Publish Date 1 March 1992
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 June 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Leicester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 300
- Language English