Meta-Commerce

Meta-Commerce aims to identify and structure the critical questions underlying the long-term viability of the financial system.

Inspired by David Hilbert's 23 questions project of 1900, the Meta-Commerce programme brings together financial experts across a range of disciplines with a view to producing a framework of questions in order to prioritise future research and direct action.

By helping to identify a set of core questions that link economics, finance and society, and that need solving in order to have a working financial system, Meta-Commerce maps the road to Long Finance and contributes to its overarching goals - to expand frontiers, change systems, deliver services and build communities.

Status

Three clear issues resonate through our various research areas and questions:

• fairness across different cultures - does fairness as a concept increase as wealth increases and, if not, what other organising principles for financial services could create desirable outcomes?
• trust across different cultures - what creates and destroys trust, where?
• value across cultures and time - what is the dynamic between value and price (which could be an expression of long-term and short-term concerns), and is value always higher than price?

Call for research

Following the workshop in November 2012, the first Meta-Commerce research proposal is now open to applicants. We are seeking a post-graduate research student to undertake a study into Fairness and Finance. For more information, please download the research brief.

Related Links

• Long Finance Research Agenda
• Harvard University - Solving the Social Sciences' Hard Problems
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - Grand Challenges
• Professor David Hilbert's August 1900 lecture notes & Vortrag
• "Compte Rendu du Deuxieme Congres International des Mathematiciens"
• "A Sideways Look At Hilbert's Twenty-three Problems of 1900" by Ivor Grattan Guinness, Notices of the AMS, Volume 7, Number 7 (August 2000).