Marketplaces, Markets, and Market Design

Alvin Roth

American Economic Review, 2018, vol. 108, issue 7, 1609-58

Abstract: Marketplaces are often small parts of large markets, and both markets and marketplaces come in many varieties. Market design seeks to understand what marketplaces must accomplish to enable different kinds of markets. Marketplaces can have varying degrees of success, and there can be marketplace failures. I'll discuss labor markets like the market for new economists, and also markets for new lawyers and doctors that have suffered from the unraveling of appointment dates to well before employment begins. Markets work best if they enjoy social support, but some markets are repugnant in the sense that some people think they should be banned, even though others want to participate in them. Laws banning such markets often contribute to the design of illegal black markets, and this raises new issues for market designers. I'll briefly discuss markets and black markets for narcotics, marijuana, sex, and surrogacy, and the design of markets for kidney transplants, in the face of widespread laws against (and broader repugnance for) compensating organ donors. I conclude with open questions and engineering challenges.

JEL-codes: A11 D40 D47 E26 J40 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.108.7.1609
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.108.7.1609 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... PN7LJbFnECH49tCtF0lH (application/zip)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:108:y:2018:i:7:p:1609-58

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().