Friday, August 12, 2016

Market Design, and NSF support of economics

Market design plays a role in the arguments both pro and con, in the recent symposium in the Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Symposium: NSF Funding for Economists

In Defense of the NSF Economics Program (#11)
Robert A. Moffitt
A Skeptical View of the National Science Foundation's Role in Economic Research (#12)
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok

 Moffitt mentions auction design, kidney exchange and school choice (with a more general reference to deferred acceptance clearinghouses) as beneficiaries of NSF funding. Cowen and Tabarrok single out auction design as something whose private benefits might argue against government funding: "Indeed, few areas in economics have been as privately remunerative as auction theory."

No comments: