Minimalist Market Design: A Framework for Economists with Policy Aspirations

Tayfun S\"onmez
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tayfun Sönmez

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Abstract: Minimalist market design is an economic design framework developed from the perspective of an outsider -- one seeking to improve real institutions without a commission or official mandate. It offers a structured, "minimally invasive" method for reforming institutions from within: identify their mission as understood by stakeholders, diagnose the root causes of failure, and refine only those elements that compromise that mission. By fixing what is broken and leaving the rest intact, the framework respects the tacit knowledge embedded in long-standing institutions, minimizes unintended consequences, and secures legitimacy that facilitates adoption. Such targeted interventions often call for novel, use-inspired theory tailored to the institutional context. In this way, minimalist market design advances both theory and practice through a reciprocal process fostering collaboration across disciplines and between academic research and real-world practice. Tracing the framework's evolution over twenty-five years of intertwined progress in theory and real-world implementation across a range of matching market applications -- including housing allocation, school choice, living-donor organ exchange for kidney and liver, military branch assignment in the U.S. Army, the allocation of vaccines and therapies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the allocation of public jobs and college seats under India's reservation system -- this monograph reveals a consistent "less is more" ethos, showing how restrained, precisely targeted reforms can yield substantial policy improvements while advancing fundamental knowledge.

Date: 2023-12, Revised 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
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