Economics is an important component of the core MBA curriculum because economic principles are behind almost all managerial activities. Economists at business schools research and teach about how markets work; how scarce resources get produced, consumed and allocated; and how various participants in the economy make optimal decisions. These issues will be relevant to managers in virtually all aspects of their work for the rest of their careers. This is true both at the broadest levels—such as strategic management, finance, organizational design, human resources, and managing global organizations—and also when they drill down into more specific areas, such as optimizing prices, setting employee compensation, and analyzing how modern managerial practices affect a firm’s performance. One rapidly growing area of economics that has received a lot of attention from business-school economists is market design. Traditionally, economists studied the properties of existing market institutions. More recently, however, they have taken an active role, and have applied economic analysis to design new markets or to improve existing ones.