A market is commonly thought of as a place where commodities are bought and sold. Thus fru

it and vegetables are sold wholesale at Covent Garden Market and meat is sold wholesale at Smithfield Market. But there are markets for things 【21】______ commodities, in the usual sense. There are 【22】______ estate markets, foreign exchange markets, labor markets, short-term capital markets, and so on; there may be a market for anything which has a price. And there may be no particular place 【23】______ dealings are confined. Buyers and sellers may be 【24】______ over the whole world and instead of actually meeting together in a market-place they may deal with one another 【25】______ telephone, telegram, cable or letter. 【26】______ dealings are 【27】______ to a particular place, the dealers may consist wholly or in part of agents 【28】______ instructions from clients far away. Thus agents buy meat at Smithfield 【29】______ retail butchers all over England; and 【30】______ on the London Stock Exchange buy and sell 【31】______ on instructions from clients all over the world. We must therefore define a market 【32】______ any area over which buyers and sellers are 【33】______ such close touch with one another, either directly or 【34】______ dealers, that the prices 【35】______ in one part of the market affect the prices paid in other parts.

Modem means of communication are so rapid that a buyer can discover 【36】______ asking, and can accept it if he wishes, 【37】______ he may be thousands of miles away. Thus the market for anything is 【38】______ . the whole world. But in fact things have, normally, only a local or national market.

This may be because nearly the whole demand is concentrated 【39】______ one locality. These special local demands, 【40】______ , are of quite minor importance. The main reason why many things do not have a world market is that they are costly or difficult to transport.

【21】

A．nothing other than

B．other than

C．more than

D．less than