Power concentration and state capture: Insights from history on consequences of market dominance for inequality and environmental calamities

Abstract

The organization of markets, their functioning, their interaction with the state and their broader effects on an economy and society develop slowly. While debates on inequality are dominated by developments spanning a few decades, and often even a few years, observing and analysing how inequality emerges, how it concentrates power and how it can lead to the capture of markets and the state call for a much longer, historical perspective.