Introducing the University of Chicago's Market Shaping Accelerator

Designing market shaping mechanisms to spur innovation to help solve some of the biggest global challenges.

About

Accelerating Innovation

Threats to the global community — such as climate change and pandemics — demand urgent innovation and action at scale. But when commercial incentives for innovation trail behind the social value, market shaping instruments are required to credibly signal demand and spur and scale up innovation.

The Market Shaping Accelerator aims to harness the momentum and interest in these tools generated from global successes in vaccine development to accelerate their adoption by governments, multilateral institutions, and philanthropies to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.

About

Accelerating Innovation

Threats to the global community — such as climate change and pandemics — demand urgent innovation and action at scale. But when commercial incentives for innovation trail behind the social value, market shaping instruments are required to credibly signal demand and spur and scale up innovation.

The Market Shaping Accelerator aims to harness the momentum and interest in these tools generated from global successes in vaccine development to accelerate their adoption by governments, multilateral institutions, and philanthropies to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.

Our Team

Nobel Laureates, Leading Scholars and Innovators Advance the Use of Market Shaping Instruments to Address Global Challenges​

The Market Shaping Accelerator brings together the world’s leading market shaping experts. The team behind the Accelerator has contributed to both foundational research and prominent policy successes of market shaping mechanisms, including the Pneumococcal and Frontier Advanced Market Commitments (AMCs).

Faculty Directors

Faculty Directors


Rachel Glennerster

Associate Professor of Economics, University of Chicago

Michael Kremer

University Professor in Economics, University of Chicago; 2019 Nobel Prize Recipient ​

Christopher Snyder

Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt Professor in Economics, Dartmouth College
Staff

Staff


Leah Rosenzweig

Director

Siddhartha Haria

Policy Lead

William Arnesen

Policy Manager
Advisors

Advisors


Susan Athey

Stanford University

Cath Bremner

Impax Asset Management

Michael Greenstone

University of Chicago

Tom Kalil

Schmidt Futures

Matthew Kotchen

Yale University

Steve Levitt

University of Chicago

Nan Ransohoff

Frontier

Jean Tirole

Toulouse School of Economics

Heidi Williams

Darmouth College

Catherine Wolfram

University of California, Berkeley

Innovation Challenge

An open call for ideas to surface high-impact market shaping proposals to address climate change and pandemic preparedness

In its first year the Accelerator will surface challenges well suited to be addressed with market shaping instruments, support the development of viable proposals, attract external funding to move selected proposals into action and finally follow these mechanisms through to completion.

Climate Change

Climate mitigation and adaptation strategies including carbon removal, green steel, clean cooling, and climate-resilient crops pose potential opportunities for market shaping mechanisms to increase commercial incentives for innovation in these areas.

Pandemic Preparedness

Global losses from pandemics are expected to be over $800 billion annually. Promising candidates for market shaping instruments to mitigate these losses include broad spectrum antivirals, a universal coronavirus vaccine, and an intranasal coronavirus vaccine, among others.

Event Recap

Official Launch of the Market Shaping Accelerator

The University of Chicago hosted a special launch event on the evening of May 4, 2023 at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. to learn more about the Market Shaping Accelerator and the $2 million Innovation Challenge. View pictures from the event and watch the video using the button below.

Latest News

In the News ·‎
‎ May 17, 2023

Opportunities

Join the Accelerator

We’re hiring full time staff. We are also interested in people with domain expertise in climate change and pandemic preparedness as well as the economics of innovation, industrial organization and costing/pricing. If you are interested in offering your expertise, please reach out: [email protected].

An aerial view of the campus facing northwest with downtown Chicago in the background.

Policy Lead

The Policy Lead will lead on economic analysis and drive collaborations with innovators, policy makers, and funders to support the adoption of high impact market shaping proposals that will incentivize innovations to address climate change, biosecurity, and other pressing global challenges.

Policy Analyst

The Policy Analyst will support economic appraisal, including cost-benefit analysis, of market shaping proposals and support analysis of policy challenges such as climate mitigation, climate adaptation, pandemic preparedness, biosecurity, and other pressing global challenges.

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