Making a Market

Economists have devoted considerable effort to explaining how a market economy functions, but they have given a good deal less attention to explaining how a market economy is formed. In Making a Market, Jean Ensminger analyses the process by which the market was introduced into the economy of a group of Kenyan pastoralists. Professor Ensminger employs new institutional economic analysis to assess the impact of new market institutions on production and distribution, with particular emphasis on the effect of institutions on decreasing transaction costs over time. This 1993 study traces the effects of increasing commercialisation on the economic well-being of individual households, rich and poor alike, over considerable time and analyses the process by which institutions themselves are transformed as a market economy develops.

"Jean Ensminger's account of economic transformations among the pastoral Orma of eastern Kenya applies a new theoretical perspective to the study of cultural change. In particular, the book's ethnographic accuracy and theoretical integration are outstanding. I dare say that it will have a major impact on anthropological studies of economic change as it goes far beyond a mere description of what changes, but looks also for explanations of why individual behavior and institutions evolve in one direction and not in another." Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, "Jean Ensminger has written an excellent book that addresses several different audiences. She is an anthropologist, but much of what she has to say is addressed to economists, sociologists, and political scientists....The fact that the book cuts across so many different disciplines is one of its principal merits." American Political Science Review, "This book has something to offer both economists and anthropologists; the former will see how the specific knowledge of economic institutions gathered by cultural anthropologists can affect the predicted results of neoclassical economic models; the latter will see the power of the new institutional economic models to elicit the right questions." Journal of Economic History, "This book makes an important contribution to the literature on development, institutions and the understanding of change in Africa." Mwangi wa Githinji, University of California, Riverside, in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization