NYU Steinhardt Hosts Book Discussion Event with Facebook Co-Founder

As part of the Dean’s Public Square Series, NYU Steinhardt welcomed Chris Hughes to discuss his recent book, Marketcrafters: The 100-Year Struggle to Shape the American Economy, on November 12. 

One of the original co-founders of Facebook, Hughes is an economist and writer who serves as chair of the Economic Security Project, a leading nonprofit advocating for economic power for all Americans. In Marketcrafters, Hughes argues that, for the last hundred years or more, the US economy has been actively produced via efforts to shape markets. His book posits that markets sitting at the core of some of the biggest economic transformations of the 20th and early 21st centuries (money, technology, energy, housing, healthcare, transportation, and more) have been constantly steered, stabilized, protected, subsidized, and sometimes outright invented by people making and maintaining institutions and infrastructures in government.

The event began with opening remarks from Kelli Moore, associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, who stated that “Marketcrafters offers us an opportunity to consider accounting, markets, and their mediating technologies and institutions … Today’s discussion can help us consider how we might (or, may have already) incorporate disciplinary questions and methods from institutional economics into our own research in media, culture, and communication.”

The event featured a discussion between Hughes and Taylor Nelms, PhD, vice president of research and insights at the Financial Health Network, a national nonprofit focused on consumer financial health for all. The two discussed many elements of the book, including Hughes’ decision to frame each chapter around an individual’s biography—such as Jesse Jones, Katherine Ellickson, and Bill Simon—and how Hughes envisions readers reacting to and leveraging his work.