What Patrick Collison thinks about market efficiency
Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute. Keeps a personal site of reading lists, open questions and notes on scientific progress and how research is funded.
Patrick Collison did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
Filter market efficiency · Newest first
Only Patrick Collison on market efficiency. See everyone on market efficiency
3 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Patrick Collison has said — not written or endorsed by them.
-
Their wordsWell, certain kinds of price discrimination will work less well (how do coupons work if every agent hunts fastidiously for them?), and certain kinds of customer cross-subsidy will change (today, people who forget to cancel subscriptions subsidize those who don't).
-
Their wordsThis has led to some amount of inefficiency, as companies try to propitiate capricious ranking algorithms and incur various placement fees. It's not all deadweight loss (willingness to pay is itself a kind of signal, which is valuable to buyers), but it's not great.
-
Their wordsTaken as a whole, the market is a massively parallelized, decentralized, and highly imperfect value attribution machine