World Balance is doomed until ..

[Vespar]

I dont see a reason to link the marketboards across servers. The marketboard prices vary from server to server because that is the nature of the market boards. Everything relies on Supply and Demand and that servers' needs. Linking Market Boards could cause certain servers' economies to collapse making it harder for players to earn money or the opposite, inflate prices to the point where folks cant afford anything or feel they are forced to do the unthinkable and turn to buying gil.

There really is no need to link the servers' MBs though, most everything in the game can be farmed with just a bit of effort on the part of the player.

[Zojha]

The marketboard prices vary from server to server because that is the nature of the market boards.

More precisely, it is the nature of mono- and oligopolies. Large servers like Balmung are the only ones even remotely getting close to the ideal of perfect competition where everyone is a price taker and thus the only ones where a market is even remotely allocatively efficient as per economic theory. But even there, you'll have a lot of local oligopolies because every good represents an individual market and there's just too many goods to create a full coverage with the limited retainer space. And whenever a market isn't perfectly competitive, allocation of goods will be inefficient.

And when a market is inefficient, you'd generally want the government to step in. Hence antitrust laws etc. Or in SEs case, handing out crafted glamour items via PotD hoards/retainers etc.

[pushin_tin]

More precisely, it is the nature of mono- and oligopolies. Large servers like Balmung are the only ones even remotely getting close to the ideal of perfect competition where everyone is a price taker and thus the only ones where a market is even remotely allocatively efficient as per economic theory. But even there, you'll have a lot of local oligopolies because every good represents an individual market and there's just too many goods to create a full coverage with the limited retainer space. And whenever a market isn't perfectly competitive, allocation of goods will be inefficient.

And when a market is inefficient, you'd generally want the government to step in. Hence antitrust laws etc. Or in SEs case, handing out crafted glamour items via PotD hoards/retainers etc.

Found the econ major.