May 14 -15, 2026 – Austin, TX
About the Workshop
This workshop brings together scholars from various disciplines who work on foundational normative questions related to markets.
Markets arise and operate through law – not just through public regulation but also through private law regimes (in property, contract, and tort) that create entitlements, enforce market exchanges, and limit expropriation. The operation of markets also reflects and reinforces a set of social norms – e.g., atomism, competition, douceur, etc.—and these too bear no necessary connection to market activity. Thus, any particular market architecture is not inevitable, but rather the result of a complex set of choices and developments.
The contingent, constructed nature of the legal rules and social norms that guide the market – or, maybe, markets (since different markets may be differently designed) – implies that the legal and social infrastructure of the market can, and indeed should, be normatively evaluated. The purpose of this interdisciplinary workshop on The Normative Foundations of the Market is to critically investigate the normative underpinnings that can, should, or in fact do underlie the operation of the market (or of a specific market, such as the labor market or the housing market).
Program
Location:
Sheffield-Massey Room, 2nd Floor, Room 2.111 of Townes Hall
University of Texas School of Law
727 E Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX 78705.
May 14
9:30: Gather and light breakfast
9:45: Opening remarks
10:00-11:00: Daniel 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: Samuel 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
Participants
Brian Berkey, Wharton
Oren Bracha, Texas
Hanoch Dagan, Berkeley
Jens C. Dammann, Texas
Alma Diamond, Michigan
Avihay Dorfman, Texas
Erik Encarnacion, Texas
William Forbath, Texas
Rachel Friedman, Tel Aviv
Mark Gergen, Berkeley
Andrew Gold, Irvine
Julian Jonker, Wharton
Roy Kreitner, Tel Aviv
Jasper Kunstreich, Max Planck Institute
Daniel Markovits, Yale
Samuel Mortimer, Kyoto
Anthony Sampson, Yale
Amy Sepinwall, Pennsylvania
Rebecca Stone, UCLA
Talha Syed, Berkeley
Sabine Tsuruda, Toronto
Melissa Wasserman, Texas
Mikhail Xifaras, NYU Abu Dhabi