Centre for Market Design
We produce innovative microeconomic research and form partnerships with industry and governments to deliver value to society.
The Centre for Market Design is a research hub with expertise in microeconomics, hosted by the University of Melbourne.
Latest news and research
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Endowments, Exclusion, and Exchange
We propose a new solution for discrete exchange economies and resource‐allocation problems, the exclusion core. The exclusion core rests upon a foundational idea in the legal understanding of property, the right to exclude others.
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Research Fellow position available
We are hiring. Applications are now open for a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow - Economics, at the Centre for Market Design.
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Power Changers wins second award
The joint CMD, Victorian Government and industry project, Power Changers, to reduce household power use and ease impact on the energy grid has won a second industry award.
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Regional students gather for Frontiers in Market Design
The Centre for Market Design has hosted a group of PhD and Master's students from across Australia for the inaugural Hordern Winter School on Frontiers in Market Design and Analysis.
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Budget 2019
What does it mean for the unemployed? Refugees? Indigenous Australians? Climate change and education? University of Melbourne experts assess the Federal budget in part two of our coverage
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Make and Buy: Outsourcing, Vertical Integration, and Cost Reduction
Globalization reshaped supply chains and the boundaries of firms in favor of outsourcing. Now, even vertically integrated firms procure substantially from external suppliers. To study procurement and the structure of firms in this reshaped economy, we analyze a model in which integration grants a downstream customer the option to source internally.
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Learning to Coordinate: A Study in Retail Gasoline
This paper studies equilibrium selection in the retail gasoline industry. We exploit a unique dataset that contains the universe of station-level prices for an urban market for 15 years, and that encompasses a coordinated equilibrium transition mid-sample.
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Can we tax carbon AND keep living costs down?
Associate Professor David Byrne calls for a tax on man-made pollution and investment in renewable energy.
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The power of environmental economics
Environmental economist, Dr Leslie Martin, has been awarded a prestigious Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council (ARC) to investigate the environmental impact of the growing number of Special Economic Zones around the world. Here she discusses what drives her to undertake research and plans for the future.
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The Algorithm For Accessing Child Care
How matching theory, the study of supply and demand, could help secure your child a spot in child care
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Specialist Certificate in Economic Design
The Centre for Market Design now offers an executive certificate in market design. The course covers the role prices play in the economy, coordinating supply and demand, and the physical constraints and informational frictions at the heart of economic design.
Upcoming Events
The Centre for Market Design's research is published in top-ranking generalist and leading field journals.
Our team includes outstanding young economists specialising in research in economic theory, structural econometrics and experimental economics, who partner with peers in Australia and worldwide to drive innovation in the field of market design.
We also support workshops, mini-schools, conferences and academic visitors.
The Centre for Market Design applies game theory, information economics and incentive design to policy and industry problems.
We connect leading academics with real-world policy problems to design, test and implement tailor-made solutions. We develop mechanisms that help government and industry make positive changes using robust economic design tools.
See a full list of our partnerships with government, industry and universities.
Latest projects
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Border Biosecurity
The CMD is focusing on incentives to improve Australia’s biosecurity system.
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Waste Sector Reform
Economic design methodology will assist Infrastructure Victoria to identify options to manage waste and recycling policy.
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Biodiversity Offsets Scheme
A smart market is being designed for the New South Wales Government’s Biodiversity Offset Scheme.
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Youth Justice
A joint field experiment is underway to evaluate the effectiveness of non-custodial interventions for young offenders.
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Improving Transport for Students with Disability
Travel times by students with autism at a northern Melbourne school have been cut by half as a result of a CMD pilot project.
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Power Changers
Associate Professor David Byrne has been instrumental in designing and evaluating a trial to help households reduce power use.
Our programs use specialised tailored pathways to offer opportunities for government and industry professionals to extend their understanding of how economic design principles and mechanisms can improve a range of procurement and other resource allocation decisions.
We work closely with state and commonwealth government agencies, researchers from local and international universities, and organisations with an interest in market design research and applications.
We share knowledge and promote market design solutions for procurement, also partnering with industry and the community to problem solve.
Our team continues to provide fiscal, efficient and engagement outcomes for its stakeholders and plans to increase contractual work by developing new strategic partnerships.
Please contact the CMD office to discuss potential partnerships.
The Centre for Market Design (CMD) was established in 2012 as a consortium of Federal and Victorian Treasury departments and the University of Melbourne, to partner with industry, government and university peers to produce innovative economic research.
It became a University research centre in 2018.
We use mechanism design, auction theory, matching markets, experimental economics, and structural econometrics to find solutions to public policy, procurement and resource allocation problems.
We work closely with state and commonwealth government agencies, researchers from local and international universities, and organisations with an interest in market design research and applications, to share knowledge and find solutions.