May 14-15, 2026 | Program | Participants | Papers
About the Conference
The Normative Foundations of the Market Conference convenes scholars from a range of academic fields who engage with fundamental normative issues concerning markets.
The basic starting point for this conference is that the design and functioning of any given market are not predetermined, but instead emerge from historically and socially contingent legal, institutional, and normative choices. Recognizing the constructed and variable character of both the legal rules and social norms that structure markets—or distinct markets, which may be organized in divergent ways—opens these arrangements to normative scrutiny. Accordingly, the interdisciplinary conference The Normative Foundations of the Market aims to examine critically the values and principles that might justify, ought to inform, or in practice already shape market institutions, whether markets in general or particular domains such as commerce, labor, or housing.
Event Photos
Program
May 14
- 9:30: Gather and light breakfast
- 9:45: Opening remarks
- 10:00-11:00: Dan Markovits, Measuring and Mitigating Drip Pricing Overcharge: Evidence from an Online Marketplace Experiment with a Digital Shopping Assistant with comments by Roy Kreitner
- 11:00-11:20: Break
- 11:20-12:20: Rebecca Stone, A Rights-Based Account of Third-Party Rights in Contract, with comments by Alma Diamond
- 12:20-1:20: Lunch
- 1:20-2:20: Oren Bracha and Talha Syed, The Analytical Foundations of Markets, with comments by Mark Gergen
- 2:20-2:40: Break
- 2:40-3:40: Jens Dammann, Virtue Markets: Ethical Investing and Organizational Choice, with comments by Andrew Gold
- 3:40-4:00: Break
- 4:00-5:00: Sabine Tsuruda, Workplace Authority and the Duty to Bargain, with comments by Brian Berkey
- 5:00: Break/stroll/drinks
- 6:30: Dinner
May 15
- 8:30: Light breakfast
- 9:00-10:00: Rachel Friedman, Aristotelian Reciprocities: On the Norms of Exchange in Commerce, Friendship, and Politics, with comments by Amy Sepinwall
- 10:00-10:20: Break
- 10:20 – 11:20: Julian Jonker, Platform Power and Data Labor, with comments by William Forbath
- 11:20-11:40: Break
- 11:40-12:40: Sam Mortimer, Discrimination As Defamation, with comments by Erik Encarnacion
- 12:40-1:40: Lunch
- 1:40-2:40: Mikhail Xifaras, What’s Property for—and Does It Matter?, with comments by Jasper Kunstreich
- 2:40-3:00: Break
- 3:00-4:00: Amy Sepinwall, A Private Right to Public Accommodations, with comments by Avihay Dorfman
- 4:00-4:15: Closing remarks