The essays reproduced in this volume analyze the guild system in Byzantium and the West, and investigate for the first time the process of price formation in Byzantium. Innovative approaches are devised to fathom the conceptual basis, institutional parameters, market organization and structures, and market dynamics which shaped price determination. Correlatively, it is persuasively established that the Byzantine guilds, unlike their counterparts in the West, did not fix prices through concerted action as they did not command the requisite market power or institutional support. Fundamentally,...