In providing any sort of assistance, humanitarian actors need to analyse the markets for key goods to see how the disaster has affected them. This is as necessary for food aid, shelter or seed provision as it is for cash transfers. That said, there has tended to be greater emphasis on the need for market analysis in cash-based programming, and this is certainly crucial in judging whether cash is appropriate. This Issue Paper explores the importance of market analysis in the planning, delivery and management of cash responses. Key questions to ask about markets in thinking about the appropriateness of cash are relatively simple.