Learn to design markets that work: the rules, prices, incentives, auctions, matching systems and platforms that decide who trades with whom, on what terms, and whether people trust the result.
Market Design teaches you to treat a market as something people design, not something that simply happens. You start with the basics: what a market is made of, why markets work and fail, and how they grow and get locked in. Then you learn the economics every market designer needs, including supply and demand, elasticity, externalities and hidden information, and the behavioural side: trust, reputation, defaults and friction. The core of the course covers the principles of good market design, such as thickness, congestion and making it safe to take part, then incentives and fees, pricing, auctions, matching markets, game theory and mechanism design. Later modules cover digital platforms and network effects, algorithms that rank, match and price, fraud and gaming, fairness and transparency, bubbles and crashes, moral hazard, repairing broken markets, power and ethics, and when markets should not be used at all. You finish by learning to measure market health, test and simulate new rules, work with regulators and stakeholders, and design a market of your own. One example runs through every lesson: a digital farm produce marketplace in Lusaka, Zambia.
What's inside
48 lessons
1What market design is
2What a market is made of
3Why markets work, and why they fail
4How markets grow and get locked in
5Supply, demand and price
6Elasticity and how people respond
7Externalities and market failures
8Hidden information
9How people actually decide
10Trust, reputation and social proof
11Friction, defaults and nudges
12Thickness, getting enough people together
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13Congestion, when markets get crowded
14Making it safe and simple to take part
15Boundaries, roles and entry rules
16Central coordination or spread-out deals
17Incentives and motivation
18Rewards, fees and penalties
19When incentives backfire
20Posted prices and bargaining
21Dynamic and surge pricing
The final quiz
It opens when you finish every lesson. Score 75% or more to get your certificate. You have 2 tries on the same questions. If neither passes, you go through the course again and get 2 new tries.
