In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, John Kay unravels the truth about markets. He explains why market economies outperformed socialist or centrally directed ones, but also why the imposition of market institutions often fails. Kay’s search for the truth about markets takes him from the shores of Lake Zürich to the streets of Mumbai, through evolutionary psychology and moral philosophy, to the flower market at San Remo and Christies’ saleroom in New York. Through this range of material he shows that market economies function because they are embedded in a social, political and cultural context, and cannot work otherwise.