Ongoing credit relationships replace bargaining as the dominant trade mechanism

Evidence

In this situation continuous commerce would be impossible without a high level of credit. Credit is thus the most prominent feature of buyer-seller relations; and you do not bargain if each side has a long-term arrangement to protect. … The higgling or sliding price mechanism that Westerners imagine is endemic to foreign bazaars is absent from large sections of Nima’s market. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2315

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the law-merchant material (Milgrom) on how ongoing relationships substitute for one-shot negotiation in sustaining trade.
• DEFINE: The passage defines the structural condition under which bargaining disappears: when both sides hold long-term arrangements worth protecting.