* Let's say you were stuck in a gruesome POW Camp and you wanted a decent meal (or a pack of cigarettes or a quality cup of coffee or some fresh fruit), what on earth would you do? * If you wanted a gun (but couldn't pass a background check), where would you get it? * If you were desperate for a kidney, and looking for a faster way to procure one, how might you swing that? * If you needed a better way to auction something off (something I've wondered about myself), what would that better mousetrap look like? All of the solutions lie in that elusive, vague, far reaching, overused and knotty term, "the market". We all think we understand what "the market" means, but would probably be flummoxed if we were asked to explain it or define it. Economists, though, have actually spent a great deal of time thinking through the many subtle nuances of every possible marketplace - managing illicit goods, figuring out how prices are set, coping with situations in which markets are hard to "clear" (online dating and toxic waste are classic examples), and what to do when manipulation or misinformation warps a marketplace (like, say, when those VRBO photos look a lot nicer than the actual house).

Author Biography

Ray Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and Research Director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. He received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University, and his work has been covered widely in the popular press, from Maureen Dowd in the New York Times to Al Jazeera to the Shanghai Daily. He also writes a monthly column for Slate. His first book, Economic Gangsters (with Ted Miguel), was published to great critical acclaim by Princeton University Press in 2008. Tim Sullivan is an executive editor at Harvard Business Books. He has also worked at Basic Books, Portfolio, and Princeton University Press, and has worked with some of the world's leading economists.