What does sociology have to contribute to the study of markets that goes beyond what economics can tell us?

Economics as a subject or discipline educates us only the system in which markets work in modern economics. For an instance, it explains price mechanism, the probable impact of specific kinds of investment or the factors that influence people to save or spend. It has nothing to bear with the cascading effects of all these factors on the society, hence, sociology in these perspectives goes beyond the reach of economics.

We will first discuss about the political economy as it was called during eighteenth century in England. Adam Smith is known as the father of economics and his “The Wealth Of Nations” is an attempt to understand the market economy which he says made up of a series of individual exchanges or transactions that create a functioning and ordered system in an automatic ways. The unseen force at work that converts individual welfare or good into good for society. As per Smith, the capitalist economy works best in the circumstance when individual buyers and sellers make rational decisions that serve their own interests. For this reason idea of a free market or laissez-faire (viz leave alone or let it be) economic philosophy has been supported by Smith.

Sociologists see markets as social institutions—In their opinion, economics are society embedded. This is because, markets are controlled or organised by particular social groups or classes and they have specific links to other institutions, social processes and structures.