The term shadow pricing is used to refer to either one of two things:

1. The actual market value of a money market fund share even if its stated value is $1 per share.
2. The assignment of a dollar value to an abstract commodity that is not ordinarily quantifiable as having a market price but needs to be assigned a valuation to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

The latter instance is more common and involves a shadow price that is assigned to goods that are not generally bought and sold as separate assets in a marketplace, such as production costs or intangible assets.