Real prices and ideal prices

The distinction between real prices and ideal prices is a distinction between actual prices paid for products, services, assets and labour (the net amount of money that actually changes hands), and computed prices which are not actually charged or paid in market trade, although they may facilitate trade.^[1] The difference is between actual prices paid, and information about possible, potential or likely prices, or "average" price levels.^[2] This distinction should not be confused with the difference between "nominal prices" (current-value) and "real prices" (adjusted for price inflation, and/or tax and/or ancillary charges).^[3] It is more similar to, though not identical with, the distinction between "theoretical value" and "market price" in financial economics.^[4]

^ Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas, Political economy of money and finance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6.
^ "...existing price-theories do not concern themselves directly with actual market-prices, at which commodities are in fact sold and bought on the market, but with purely theoretical ideal 'equilibrium' prices. The only way in which such theories are allegedly related to real prices is indirectly, through the supposition that the ideal unit-price of each commodity-type is the long-term time-average of its real unit-price." Emmanuel Farjoun & Moshe Machover, The Laws of Chaos. London: Verso, 1983, p. 103.
^ A "nominal price" is sometimes also understood as a price formality which is only a reference, and differs from the actual deal struck.
^ Nasser Saber, Speculative Capital, Vol. 1. London: Pearson Education, 1999, p. 39.

[1] Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas, Political economy of money and finance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 6.

[2] "...existing price-theories do not concern themselves directly with actual market-prices, at which commodities are in fact sold and bought on the market, but with purely theoretical ideal 'equilibrium' prices. The only way in which such theories are allegedly related to real prices is indirectly, through the supposition that the ideal unit-price of each commodity-type is the long-term time-average of its real unit-price." Emmanuel Farjoun & Moshe Machover, The Laws of Chaos. London: Verso, 1983, p. 103.

[3] A "nominal price" is sometimes also understood as a price formality which is only a reference, and differs from the actual deal struck.

[4] Nasser Saber, Speculative Capital, Vol. 1. London: Pearson Education, 1999, p. 39.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]