Modern-day markets do not arise spontaneously or evolve normally. Rather these are crafted by people, firms, and most of all, by governments. Thus ‘marketcraft’ represents a primary function of government comparable to statecraft and requires significant artistry to govern marketplaces effectively. Just like real-world statecraft can be masterful or muddled, so that it is with marketcraft.

In Marketcraft, Steven Vogel creates his argument upon the recognition that markets are crafted then about Marketcraft: How Government authorities Make Markets Work systematically explores the implications for analysis and policy. In modern societies, there is absolutely no such issue as a free marketplace. Markets are establishments, and contemporary markets are all seriously regulated. The ‘free market trend’ that started in the 1980s didn’t see a deregulation of marketplaces, but instead a re-regulation. Vogel talks about an array of plan issues to support this concept, focusing in particular in the U.S. and Japan. He examines the way the U.S., the ‘freest’ marketplace economy, is in fact being among the most greatly controlled advanced economies, even though Japan’s work to liberalize it is economy counterintuitively extended the government’s part in practice.