The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
Some of our most valuable resources are allocated through “hidden markets.” By understanding their rules, you can tip the scales in your favor.
“Hidden Markets” help us understand how our most valuable resources are allocated: who gets what, and why. Many of life’s finite resources—good jobs, daycare slots, medical care, must-have consumer products, concert tickets, restaurant reservations—are not awarded based on standard economic rules where whoever pays the most comes out on top. They are controlled, instead, by a powerful phenomenon known as hidden markets. In accessible, eye-opening talks, Wharton professor Judd Kessler, a pioneer in the field, shows us how to see the hidden markets all around us. At its core, Judd’s talk is a profoundly insightful look at how hidden markets dole out scarce resources and how we can see them more clearly and use them to our advantage.
Every day you play in countless hidden markets, whether or not you can see them. By better understanding the rules of these markets, and the strategies you need to win in them, you have the potential to dramatically improve what you get. To be a successful market participant, you need to know when to “go for gold” (aiming for what you really want) and when to “settle for silver” (pretending something less desirable is your top choice). You need to know what to signal about yourself—and to whom. You need to know when it makes sense to enter a lottery you want to lose and when you should stay on a waiting list rather than taking what you have been offered. If you want the most desirable outcomes, you can only gain from having a framework for identifying and succeeding in hidden markets.
Your organization also has many hidden markets that leaders design and control—often without realizing it. The rules that you establish for these markets may be far from optimal: they might have been set by historical accident, be poorly designed, and they likely don’t address tech advancements that lead to new opportunities. If your company is tasked with selling a desirable good, setting financial budgets, scheduling work shifts, divvying out perks, addressing consumer complaints, or otherwise allocating a scarce resource—you will benefit immensely from understanding hidden markets and thinking about how they might work better.
There is no one more capable of explaining this—of making this world come alive—than Judd Kessler, a professor at Wharton who has spent the last two decades conducting research on economics in the field of market design, exploring, designing, and improving hidden markets. With Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want, he has literally written the book on understanding these markets and succeeding in them.
Judd is the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 2021, Judd was awarded the prestigious Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize for his path breaking scholarship. For his work on organ allocation, he was named one of Forbes’s “30 under 30” in Law and Policy. He is an award-winning teacher whose courses are popular among undergraduates, MBAs, PhD students, and executives, as well as a sought-after speaker. His research and writing have been featured in leading media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Politico, NPR, Hidden Brain, and Freakonomics, among others.
Harvard Business School Behavioral Science Professor "40 Under 40 MBA Professor" Author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
Speaker on Stress and Leadership in the Workplace Columbia Business School Professor Host of The TED Business Podcast
Author, Ordinary Magic Co-Director, Dweck-Walton Lab at Stanford Professor of Psychology, Stanford
Speaker on AI and Education Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning
Former CEO, Everyday Robots, Google’s Pioneering AI and Robotics Moonshot
Instant New York Times Bestselling Author of Empire of AI Lead Designer of The Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series
Harvard Business School Behavioral Science Professor "40 Under 40 MBA Professor" Author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
Speaker on Stress and Leadership in the Workplace Columbia Business School Professor Host of The TED Business Podcast
Former Mayor of Baltimore Founder, SRB & Associates
Author of Grit, the #1 New York Times Bestseller | Pioneering Researcher on Grit, Perseverance, and the Science of Success
2024 Nobel Prize Winner | 3rd Most Cited Economist in the World | MIT Institute Professor | Bestselling Co-Author of Why Nations Fail and Power and Progress
Harvard Business School Behavioral Science Professor | "40 Under 40 MBA Professor" | Author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
#1 New York Times Bestselling Co-Author of Abundance | Host of thePlain English Podcast | Founder of the Substack Derek Thompson
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author of How the Word Is Passed and Above Ground | The Atlantic Staff Writer
“Hidden markets” allocate some of our most valuable resources, and when they are poorly designed they can have major consequences for our customers and workers. Seeing the hidden markets all around you and understanding how they work can help you unlock new potential. A pioneering researcher in this burgeoning field, Judd Kessler explains how these hidden markets operate and how you can best design them. A highly engaging speaker, Judd interweaves personal stories with deep economic insight. (A story about allocating a single dessert to one of his three kids, for example, illustrates key points about what hidden markets aim to achieve and their limitations.) By the end of Judd’s talk, you will know why hidden markets arise and how can you improve the ones you control to achieve the “three Es” of efficiency, equity, and ease.
“Hidden markets” determine who gets the premier educational opportunities, the most desirable jobs, the choicest daycare slots, and the best medical care. Learning to see the hidden markets all around you—and learning the tools you need to succeed in them—will equip you to win at a game you didn’t know you were playing. A pioneering researcher in this burgeoning field, Judd Kessler explains these hidden markets and what you can do to get what you want from them. For example, he shows you how you control the hidden markets for your time and attention—and how you can change the rules of those markets to get more of what you really want. By the end of Judd’s talk, you will know how to identify these hidden markets, succeed in them, and how to improve the hidden markets you control to tip the scales in your favor.