On a non-standard characterization of the $A_p$ condition

The classical Muckenhoupt's $A_p$ condition is necessary and sufficient for the boundedness of the maximal operator $M$ on $L^p(w)$ spaces. In this paper we obtain another characterization of the $A_p$ condition. As a result, we show that some strong versions of the weighted $L^p(w)$ Coifman--Fefferman and Fefferman--Stein inequalities hold if and only if $w\in A_p$. We also give new examples of Banach function spaces $X$ such that $M$ is bounded on $X$ but not bounded on the associate space $X'$.