Markets by design
During this election season, major but unseen players have been the economy and
its bosom companion, the market. Republicans favor leaving the market alone,
Democrats favor using government to poke and prod it into greater and fairer
activity. What Alex Marshall says in his new book The Surprising Design
of Market Economies, is that both sides miss that there is no market
apart from government, which creates all the institutions and structures markets
grow out of and depend on. Marshall, a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association in New York City, kicks off the fall lecture series at the Lincoln Institute on October 17.
There are many stories about how governments have created the many institutions that have created our modern markets. They range from patent systems, created by the Venetian Senate in 1474; property markets, created by leaders ranging from King Henry VIII to Thomas Jefferson; common national languages, created by more intrusive government policy than usually realized; and physical infrastructure, created by governments from the ancient Romans to the current Chinese state. Marshall will talk about how we can start more actively designing these systems that shape our lives, rather than leaving them to the courts and the lobbyists.
Marshall is also author of two previous books about cities, Beneath the Metropolis, and How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken. A journalist and former newspaper reporter, Marshall has specialized in writing about infrastructure and urban planning, a domain that has led him into writing about economics. A regular columnist on transportation for Governing Magazine, Marshall’s opinions have appeared on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Bloomberg News. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, The Boston Globe and many other publications. He has taught at the New Jersey School of Architecture in Newark. He holds a master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and from 1999-2000 he was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
There are many stories about how governments have created the many institutions that have created our modern markets. They range from patent systems, created by the Venetian Senate in 1474; property markets, created by leaders ranging from King Henry VIII to Thomas Jefferson; common national languages, created by more intrusive government policy than usually realized; and physical infrastructure, created by governments from the ancient Romans to the current Chinese state. Marshall will talk about how we can start more actively designing these systems that shape our lives, rather than leaving them to the courts and the lobbyists.
Marshall is also author of two previous books about cities, Beneath the Metropolis, and How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken. A journalist and former newspaper reporter, Marshall has specialized in writing about infrastructure and urban planning, a domain that has led him into writing about economics. A regular columnist on transportation for Governing Magazine, Marshall’s opinions have appeared on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Bloomberg News. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, The Boston Globe and many other publications. He has taught at the New Jersey School of Architecture in Newark. He holds a master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and from 1999-2000 he was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
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