May 9-10, 2025 – Worcester College, Oxford, UK
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
Friday, May 9
9:00 am – Gather
9:15 am – Opening Remarks
9:30 am -10:30 am – Session 1
Presenter: Ariel Ezrahi – Competition Overdose
Commentator: Roy Kreitner
10:30 am -10:50 am – Break
10:50 am -11:50 am – Session 2
Presenter: Shai Agmon: The Institutional Limits of Markets
Commentator: Abbye Atkinson
11:50 am – 12:10 am – Break
12:10 am – 1:10 pm – Session 3
Presenter: Cecile Fabre: Commodification of Cultural Artifacts
Commentator: Assaf Sharon
1:10 pm – 2:10 pm – Lunch
2:10 pm – 3:10 pm – Session 4
Presenter: Kim Krawiec: Repugnant Work
Commentator: Alan Morrison
3:10 pm – 3:30 pm – Break
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm – Session 5
Presenter: Avihay Dorfman and Hanoch Dagan: The Powers of Discrimination
Commentator: Debra Satz
4:30 pm – Optional Stroll in Oxford
7:00 pm – Dinner
Saturday, May 10
9:30 am – Coffee
10:00 am – 11:00 am – Session 6
Presenter: Grant Rozeboom and Julian Jonker: Market Egalitarianism: Antihierarchical or Antisectarian?
Commentator: Mikhail Xifaras
11:00 am – 11:20 am – Break
11:20 am -12:20 pm – Session 7
Presenter: Johanna Stark: Beyond Prediction: Internal and External Perspectives on Mistakes of (Private) Law
Commentator: Felix Koch
12:20 pm – 1:20 pm – Lunch
1:20 pm – 2:20 pm – Session 8
Presenter: Mark Gergen and Hanoch Dagan: The Many Beneficiaries of Liberal Contract
Commentator: Brookes Brown
2:20 pm – 2:40 pm – Closing remarks
Participants
Shai Agmon (Oxford)
Abbye Atkinson (Berkeley)
Brookes Brown (Toronto)
Simon Cowan (Oxford)
Hanoch Dagan (Berkeley)
Tsilly Dagan (Oxford)
Avihay Dorfman (Tel-Aviv)
David Enoch (Oxford)
Ariel Ezrahi (Oxford)
Cecille Fabre (Oxford)
Talia Fisher (Tel-Aviv)
Mark Gergen (Berkeley)
Josh Getzler (Oxford)
Matt Hamilton (Berkeley)
Nien-hê Hsieh (Harvard)
Felix Koch (Zurich)
Kim Krawiec (Virginia)
Roy Kreitner (Tel-Aviv)
Colin Mayer (Oxford)
Ben McFarlane (Oxford)
Alan Morrison (Oxford)
Samuel Mortimer (Oxford)
Grant Rozeboom (St. Mary’s)
Debra Satz (Standford)
Amy Sepinwall (Penn)
Ayelet Shachar (Berkeley)
Assaf Sharon (Molad)
Johanna Stark (Max-Planck)
Mikhail Xifaras (NYU)
Organizing Committee
Hanoch Dagan
Elizabeth J. Boalt Professor in Law
Director, Berkeley Center for Private Law Theory
Berkeley
Amy Sepinwall
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Tsilly Dagan
Professor of Taxation Law
Worcester College, Oxford
Colin Mayer
Emeritus Professor of Management Studies
Blavatnik School of Government and the Saïd Business School, Oxford