Markets and Commons studies how shared resources, knowledge, and institutions shape the markets that people in rural and semi-urban economies depend on.
Most market research stops at the edge of what’s easy to count. We start where it gets harder — in the shared wells, informal schools, village cooperatives, and unwritten rules that quietly govern how developing markets actually function.
Markets and Commons is a research practice built around a single conviction: that you cannot understand a market in a rural or semi-urban economy without understanding the commons it sits inside. The shared grazing land, the rotating savings group, the community that decides who teaches the children — these aren’t background. They are the market’s operating system.
We bring three ways of seeing to every question. We live alongside the people we study through ethnographic fieldwork. We listen closely through qualitative inquiry. And we test what we learn at scale through quantitative analysis. The result is research that is both grounded and rigorous — briefs and papers that funders, operators, and institutions can actually act on.
That the people closest to a problem hold knowledge that surveys miss. That rigor and empathy are not in tension. And that good research earns its keep only when it changes a decision.
We go to the field before we form a view. Findings begin with what we observe, not what we expected.
We are explicit about what our methods can and cannot show, and we publish our limitations alongside our results.
We treat communities as collaborators and knowledge-holders, not as data sources to be extracted from.
We publish less, but each brief is built to inform a real decision in education, agriculture, or sustainability.
A small, multidisciplinary team of ethnographers, economists, and data analysts. (Placeholder profiles — swap in your real team.)
One or two lines on background — discipline, regions of fieldwork, what they lead on.
One or two lines on background — discipline, regions of fieldwork, what they lead on.
One or two lines on background — discipline, regions of fieldwork, what they lead on.
