Component-based Specification and Composition of Market Structures

The design of electronic markets is a time consuming process and oftenproduces unpredictable results. This paper describes a component-based specification of the market microstructure parameters and their composition. In this approach, orthogonal components are defined by rules and algorithms. Composing these components results in a market structure - an element of market space - spanned by the components. The logical connection of the components themselves isbased on rules, and has characteristics such as inheritance and overriding. The characteristics of the component-based approach propose a new way of designing electronic markets.