A Market economy

Throughout history, every society has faced the fundamental economic problem of deciding what to produce, and for whom, in a world of limited resources. In the 20th century, two competing economic systems, broadly speaking, have provided very different answers: command economies directed by a centralized government, and market economies based on private enterprise. Today, in the last decade of the 20th century, it is clear that, for people throughout the world, the central, command economy model has failed to sustain economic growth, to achieve a measure of prosperity, or even to provide economic security for its citizens.