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.

View the MSA Glossary to learn more about commonly-used terms.

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.

View the MSA Glossary to learn more about commonly-used terms.

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 Advance Market Commitments (AMCs).

Faculty Directors

Christopher Snyder

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

Michael Kremer

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

Rachel Glennerster

Associate Professor of Economics, University of Chicago

Staff

William Arnesen

Policy Manager

Sarrin Chethik

Senior Policy Analyst

Siddhartha Haria

Senior Policy Lead

Satvika Mahajan

Graduate Student Research Assistant

Claire McMahon

Policy Analyst

Leah Rosenzweig

Director

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; 2014 Nobel Prize Recipient

Heidi Williams

Dartmouth College

Catherine Wolfram

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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

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.

Administration and Operations Associate

The Administration and Operations Associate will support Professor Rachel Glennerster and MSA in administration and operations support towards the goal of incentivizing innovations that address climate change, biosecurity, and other pressing global challenges.

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