A market in which people buy and sell voluntarily, without legal compulsion. Neither the quantities traded nor the price at which trade takes place are subject to control by third parties. This is not to say that such markets operate without legal regulation: the participants have to conform to laws concerning health and safety, weights and measures, labelling requirements, and so on. The essential point about these rules, however, is that they lay down what traders must not do: for example, misrepresenting the weight of their product. The actual initiative to trade still lies with the market participants, on both sides. Free markets are contrasted with a planned economy, where one party may be ordered to buy, or the other to sell. Where there are price controls but not quantity controls, a market is partly but not wholly free.

• consumer behaviour
• consumer borrowing
• consumer choice
• consumer confidence
• consumer credit
• consumer debt
• consumer durables
• consumer expenditure
• consumer goods
• consumerism
• consumer non-durables
• consumer price index
• consumer protection
• consumer rationality
• consumer sovereignty
• consumer surplus
• consumption
• consumption externality
• consumption function
• consumption goods
• consumption possibility line
• contagion
• content, local
• contestable market
• contingent fee