Intro
You can buy and sell food and wood at the market. The buy price is always higher then the sell price but changes as transactions are made (Supply and Demand). Normally the market is just a way to correct your resources because your econ isn’t what it should be and entails a penalty. However given the differences in gather rates I am curious if the market can be used for an overall economic gain.

Going off of the gather rates on MFO http://www.rtscentral.com/readPosting.asp?hdr=&PostingId=1710600

First most simplified case, is it better to gather food and sell it for coin or gather directly?

75 coin takes 125 villager seconds (vs) to gather

If you could sell all the food you wanted for 75 coin per 100 food is it better to trade or gather coin?

100 food takes 128 vs to hunt

As expected there is a penalty for trading at the base rates.

What if the hunters are upgraded? Hunting Dogs (50w, 50c +10%)

100 food takes 115 vs to hunt

Of course to be fair note the gold upgrade. Placer mines (75f, 75w +10%)

75 gold takes 114 vs to gather

There could be some merit in getting multiple hunting upgrades (hunting dogs and furrier) to improve normal food gather rates and use the market to justify that by saving a bit on coin gathering. It’s clear it won’t be a lot even early on and the prices do change to make it less of an advantage after trading a lot.

Advanced Market

For this part I need some data about how the advanced market shipment changes things. Testing in single player yielded the following.

Selling Food for coin (coin per 100 food)
86
85
84
83
82
and so on going down by one for each transaction. Note, when the sell price reached 75 the buy price was 93

Buying Wood with coin (coin per 100 wood)
106
107
108
109
The same trend as selling. Note, when buy price reached 119 sell price reached 96

Now consider the same test as before.

100 food takes 128vs to hunt. In 128vs 77 coin can be gathered. (86 takes 143vs) or a small but noted improvement.

100 wood takes 200vs to gather. With 200vs you could gather 120 coin.

Okay, point made. With the advanced market shipment you can gather food instead of wood or coin and use the market to actually come out ahead. Big deal, it cost a whole freaking shipment and by no means can be useful in the early game when these little differences are so critical.

Still I ask, what would be the best case scenario for using this? I have to think it would be as a Spanish player’s 2nd discovery shipment instead of the 300 wood that most will send. Before reaching colonial buying the 300 wood for a stable, 100 wood for a house and then maybe even another 300 for a barracks. Thus forgoing gathering wood until after the 3rd shipment.

700 wood – > 763 gold – > 900 food + 25 coin

700 wood takes 1400vs
900food 1154vs + 25 coin 42vs = 1196vs

Leaving 204vs or enough to gather 160 food. Certainly not what I would choose.

What about hunting dogs?

900 food would take 120 fewer vs translating to 282 food at this improved rate. That is assuming you want food not wood. Clearly still not enough to justify use of the advanced market card just for this reason. Conclusion: Even in the best case scenario of 300 wood or advanced market it’s still better to go with the wood. With hunting dogs the two are almost the same. No surprises. But you never know untill you actually do the calculations. A more ideal hunting rate would change this slightly but then you could just save this second shipment and go for 700 wood and it wouldn't matter a bit.

Hunting Dogs
Since I’m going, why stop?

How much hunting has to be done for hunting dogs to pay off the tech price?

50w, 50c, 183vs
Hunt rate change (.09) 2038vs -- > 1772 food -- > sometime during the transition to colonial.

And the woodcutting tech (/w HD)?

100f, 115vs
Rate change (.05) -- > 2300vs -- > 1265w -- > later

A Villager

100f, 128vs -- > + returns made after 2:33

Doesn’t look like you should expect to see any kind of return on the techs or even villagers for a while.