The ethnography of markets after market design

Abstract:

The focus of this collaboration is market design. Market design is a relatively recent and not yet well-understood set of practices increasingly influencing business and policy making worldwide. Market design refers to the practice of tailoring markets to specific business interests (e.g. how AirBnB or Uber strategically manipulate the matching of suppliers and users) or to solve matters of collective concerns (e.g. algorithms designed to allocate school vacancies, or carbon trade to deal with pollution). Market design importantly modifies our understanding of markets. Until a few years ago, markets were mostly understood as spontaneous encounters between supply and demand. Conversely, organization and regulation were considered possible barriers to markets. Market design flips this view; organization and regulation become part of the tools used to design and implement markets to deal with private and social concerns.This project will set a new network between two groups of researchers, The Copenhagen Markets and Valuation cluster, located at Copenhagen Business School, and The Research Center for Culture and Economy, located at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.