Market Design by Edward Nik-Khah
OEconomia, 2023
The platform firm has emerged as an important site for the production of economic knowledge. This... more The platform firm has emerged as an important site for the production of economic knowledge. This paper situates the work performed by a newly christened group of “tech economists” under the auspices of these firms within a larger history of economists’ engagement with information pro- cessing. Previously, those economists wishing to grapple with the computer would ally with the military, eventually leading them to accept an under- standing of markets as purpose-built, algorithmic “person-machine sys- tems.” Upon allying with the platform firm, economists would attune their understanding to the business model of their new patrons. This paper con- siders what this development augurs for the profession.
Economy and Society, 2019
Before the 1970s, no economists claimed an ability to fix markets; now economists make markets in... more Before the 1970s, no economists claimed an ability to fix markets; now economists make markets in a smorgasbord of shapes and flavours. Secondary commentary on market design fails to appreciate how momentous this change was. We summarize the development of market design through its first attempted application-auctions for airport slots. Economists reconceptualized markets from generic allocation processes to boutique information processors. The new view entailed that economists would skew markets towards the outcomes favoured for a client. Yet they continued appealing to a unified theory of markets and the associated remit to act as neutral arbiters for everyone's welfare. Inbuilt political bias contradicts the older claims of economists to stand outside the economic process. This contradictory stance has direct implications for the 'performativity' literature.
Markets (In Search of Media), 2019
In media studies, there is recurrent fascination with how communication , especially when couched... more In media studies, there is recurrent fascination with how communication , especially when couched in terms of "information," tends to influence many spheres of social life and intellectual endeavor. Some of the key figures in that discipline have been especially attentive to the implications for politics of the modern advent of the "information economy." Nevertheless, we think that there has been little impetus among media scholars to explore how other disciplines , and in this case orthodox economics, have been providing competing accounts of the nature and importance of information over the same rough time frame. Furthermore, we think they might be surprised to learn that Friedrich Hayek and the neoliberals have been important in framing inquiry into the information economy for the larger culture for a couple of generations. This essay is a preliminary report on what would happen to intellectual history if media studies took the early development of the "economics of information" into account.
Markets, 2019
Chapter in Armin Beverungen, Markets
Journal of Institutional Economics, 2008
Advocates for a ‘different and innovative approach’ to conceptualizing
markets have argued that ... more Advocates for a ‘different and innovative approach’ to conceptualizing
markets have argued that it is possible to reengineer markets to deliver any
number of salutary public policy goals. These ‘consulting engineers for the market
economy’ have supported their ambitions by referring to the participation of
game theorists in the design and implementation of spectrum auctions. However,
the variegated and inconsistent lessons drawn from their participation indicate
that the role game theorists actually played in the auctions is not well understood.
The confusion appears to stem from significant omissions in the available (mostly
first-hand) accounts, which are boastful in taking credit for the performance of
the auctions but strangely demure in recounting the precise measures undertaken
to bring it about. In this paper, I provide an unexpurgated account of the
circumstances surrounding the participation of game theorists in the most
celebrated of spectrum auctions, those held under the auspices of the US Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). Using the FCC’s archival records, I recover
the suppressed role of the commercial funding of economic research in
determining both the extent and the nature of the economists’ participation. This
analysis emphasizes the crucial importance of the method of funding in
determining how economic research is brought to bear on public policy.
Do Economists Make Markets?, 2007
There are two positions we have to abandon. The first is the idea of critique of the hard economi... more There are two positions we have to abandon. The first is the idea of critique of the hard economists, which is intended to show them they are wrong. And the second position is to describe markets just to say they are more complicated than economists or political decision makers believe… Let us stop criticizing the economists. We recognize the right of economists to contribute to performing markets, but at the same time we claim our own right to do the same but from a different perspective. (Michel Callon in Barry and Slater, 2003, p.301).
European Economic Sociology Newsletter, 2006
Bruce G. Carruthers: Why is the past also the present and future of economic sociology? On method... more Bruce G. Carruthers: Why is the past also the present and future of economic sociology? On method, evidence, and topic_3
Private Intellectuals and Public Perplexity: The Economics Profession and the Economic Crisis
History of Political Economy, 2013
We explore recent arguments that economists may not serve to enlighten their publics so much as f... more We explore recent arguments that economists may not serve to enlighten their publics so much as foster surplus confusion and doubt concerning controversies in their areas of expertise, particularly with regard to the recent worldwide economic crisis. After describing agnotology, the new area of the history of science that studies such phenomena, we recount two instances of these activities: the role of market designers in the framing and justification of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the manufacture of the now-widespread impression that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a primary cause of the crisis.
Command Performance: Exploring What STS Thinks It Takes to Build a Market
Living in a Material World: Economic Sociology Meets Science and Technology Studies, 2008
This chapter discusses Science and Technology Studies, actor-network theory (ANT), the current ve... more This chapter discusses Science and Technology Studies, actor-network theory (ANT), the current version of ANT (ANT 6.5), the performativity of the economy, commercialization, operations research (OR), and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auctions. Actor-network theory has been promoted as a Theory of Everything and many attributes of it can be found in a relatively developed form in OR. The performativity thesis of Michel Callon has been considered as an important contribution to economic sociology, and in The Laws of the Markets, Callon claims that the economy is embedded in economics, not in society. In 1994, the FCC started the practice of auctioning communications spectrum licenses to the highest bidder and game theorists recruited by the FCC conceptualized an auction as a Bayesian learning game. Game theorists pursue the criterion of ex post Pareto optimality, whereas experimentalists pursue ex ante Pareto optimality.
My heartfelt thanks goes to Philip Mirowski, who has provided me so much in the way of intellectu... more My heartfelt thanks goes to Philip Mirowski, who has provided me so much in the way of intellectual stimulation and encouragement during my years at Notre Dame. I would like to thank David Ruccio for being a valuable interlocutor, and for pushing me in his inimitably aggressive, yet warm, manner, and Esther-Mirjam Sent for her consistent support from the very beginning of my attendance at Notre Dame Economics. I would also like to thank Teresa Ghilarducci for providing help under impossibly difficult circumstances. I was lucky to have encountered many talented professors at Notre Dame Economics, and doubly so to have attended with such high caliber graduate students. Two I would like to single out for their helpful comments are Kyu Sang Lee and Thomas Scheiding. Over the course of completing this dissertation I encountered several individuals willing to give of their time to help out. I would especially like to acknowledge John Ledyard and Lauren Patrich. I have benefited from presenting portions of this dissertation at the Performativities Workshop at the École des Mines de Paris (2004), the Eastern Economics Association Meetings (2003), the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought at George Mason University (2002), the History of Economics Society Meetings (2001), the Theory and Methods Workshop at the University of Notre Dame (2001), and the Ph.D. seminar sponsored by the University of Amsterdam and the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics vi (2000). Francesco Guala offered particularly helpful comments on portions of this work.
Neoliberalism by Edward Nik-Khah
Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 2020
Routledge Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society, 2018
In recent years, literature on neoliberal science and medical neoliberalism has suggested a link ... more In recent years, literature on neoliberal science and medical neoliberalism has suggested a link between recent changes in the organization of science and medicine, and economic ideas justifying them. This chapter discusses recent developments in biomedical science in terms of this work. The purpose in doing so is to illuminate forces shaping not only local developments such as genomics, but also the larger political economy of science.
George Stigler: Enigmatic Price Theorist of the Twentieth Century, 2020
The forays of the Chicago School of Economics into law, political science, and sociology have att... more The forays of the Chicago School of Economics into law, political science, and sociology have attracted no shortage of attention. The secondary literature on these forays focuses on the published work of members of the Chicago School, and is purblind to the examination of archival materials. This chapter uses archival research about two pillars of the Chicago School, George Stigler and Aaron Director, and offers a novel account of the history of economics imperialism. What becomes evident is that the diverse activities collectively labeled “economics imperialism” (educating judges in Chicago law and economics to better use economic analysis in a decision, undermining the ideal of the state governed by democratic consensus purportedly held by the professoriate, and inventing a certain kind of cost–benefit analysis for evaluating regulatory bodies) were devised for the same political goal: the ascendancy of Chicago neoliberalism.
Planning the 'Free' Market: The Genesis and Rise of Chicago Neoliberalism
The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism, 2018
The Chicago School of Economics emerged as one of the primary intellectual formations in the US e... more The Chicago School of Economics emerged as one of the primary intellectual formations in the US economics orthodoxy in the post-World War II Era and has served as the primary American outpost for the Mont Pèlerin Society. This chapter examines the development of Chicago neoliberalism and examines the critical role of Friedrich Hayek. It argues that the Chicago neoliberals sought to plan the “free” market. By examining the rich interplay between the distinct intellectual and institutional programs of the three most crucial figures at Chicago—Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, and George Stigler, this chapter devotes special attention to their views about knowledge and democracy, their successful promulgation outside economics proper via “economics imperialism,” and the reasons for these successes.
The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science, 2017
Although economists since John Stuart Mill have discussed the relationship of intellectual life t... more Although economists since John Stuart Mill have discussed the relationship of intellectual life to markets, it is only relatively recently—after the emergence of neoliberalism—that economists came to view knowledge as within their purview. This chapter examines how the “marketplace of ideas” as a concept fared at the hands of neoliberal economists. It focuses most intently on the work of the Chicago School economist George Stigler, who most doggedly pursued the implications of this concept for the neoliberal project. In doing so, this chapter addresses how and why the organization of science came to be a central topic of concern for neoliberal scholars, how neoliberal ideas pertaining to science have been put into practice inside and outside the academy, and what the consequences of these practices have been.
The Handbook of Neoliberalism, 2016
The Chicago School of Economics emerged as one of the primary intellectual formations in the US e... more The Chicago School of Economics emerged as one of the primary intellectual formations in the US economics orthodoxy in the post-World War II Era. Not only is it America’s most influential school of economic thought, but it has also exerted demonstrable influence across the disciplines.
Many non-economists (as well a fair share of economists) mistakenly equate Chicago with neoclassical economics, and they hold certain images about Chicago, which are oversimplified, shortsighted, and ahistorical. The first misperception concerns “economics imperialism”: Chicago economists have purposively and successfully claimed portions of the terrain of other disciplines by applying their understanding of economics in those disciplines. Chicago is not, however, coextensive with orthodoxy. Chicago neoliberals are not merely exponents of the logic of economics; they expound neoliberal ideas via economic language. A second misperception is that Milton Friedman is the quintessential icon of Chicago economics, and played the most fundamental role in its ascendancy. This overlooks that Friedman by no means represents the whole of Chicago. Moreover, there were numerous factors beyond the individual scholarly achievements of Chicago’s icons that contributed to its ascendancy. The lesser-explored methods of Chicago’s ascendance, developed by Chicago’s other icons and put into practice through assiduous efforts, compose the substance of this chapter.
Whitlam Institute Perspectives, 2016
Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Public Institutions, 2015
Social Studies of Science, 2014
In recent years, science studies scholars have critically examined several methods used by the ph... more In recent years, science studies scholars have critically examined several methods used by the pharmaceutical industry to exert control over knowledge about drugs. Complementary literatures on "medical neoliberalism" and "neoliberal science" draw attention to the economic ideas justifying such methods of organizing knowledge, and in so doing suggest that neoliberal thinkers may play an important role in developing them. As yet, the nature of this role remains unexplored. Relying on heretofore-unexamined archival evidence, this article establishes a direct link between the Chicago School of Economics and the mobilization of the pharmaceutical industry in the 1970s. It argues that economists affiliated with the Chicago School of Economics sought to influence pharmaceutical policy and science and constructed institutions to do so. These institutions--most notably the Center for the Study of Drug Development--remain highly influential. This article contributes to a historical understanding of how neoliberal ideas came to assume prominence in pharmaceutical policy, the management of science, and scientific practice.
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Market Design by Edward Nik-Khah
markets have argued that it is possible to reengineer markets to deliver any
number of salutary public policy goals. These ‘consulting engineers for the market
economy’ have supported their ambitions by referring to the participation of
game theorists in the design and implementation of spectrum auctions. However,
the variegated and inconsistent lessons drawn from their participation indicate
that the role game theorists actually played in the auctions is not well understood.
The confusion appears to stem from significant omissions in the available (mostly
first-hand) accounts, which are boastful in taking credit for the performance of
the auctions but strangely demure in recounting the precise measures undertaken
to bring it about. In this paper, I provide an unexpurgated account of the
circumstances surrounding the participation of game theorists in the most
celebrated of spectrum auctions, those held under the auspices of the US Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). Using the FCC’s archival records, I recover
the suppressed role of the commercial funding of economic research in
determining both the extent and the nature of the economists’ participation. This
analysis emphasizes the crucial importance of the method of funding in
determining how economic research is brought to bear on public policy.
Neoliberalism by Edward Nik-Khah
Many non-economists (as well a fair share of economists) mistakenly equate Chicago with neoclassical economics, and they hold certain images about Chicago, which are oversimplified, shortsighted, and ahistorical. The first misperception concerns “economics imperialism”: Chicago economists have purposively and successfully claimed portions of the terrain of other disciplines by applying their understanding of economics in those disciplines. Chicago is not, however, coextensive with orthodoxy. Chicago neoliberals are not merely exponents of the logic of economics; they expound neoliberal ideas via economic language. A second misperception is that Milton Friedman is the quintessential icon of Chicago economics, and played the most fundamental role in its ascendancy. This overlooks that Friedman by no means represents the whole of Chicago. Moreover, there were numerous factors beyond the individual scholarly achievements of Chicago’s icons that contributed to its ascendancy. The lesser-explored methods of Chicago’s ascendance, developed by Chicago’s other icons and put into practice through assiduous efforts, compose the substance of this chapter.