// GLOSSARY -- AGENTIC FINANCE
What is Steerable Agent Market?
A deliberately designed marketplace for AI agent services where incentive structures, safety mechanisms, and policy guardrails are built in from the start — rather than emerging organically.
WHY IT MATTERS
Unsteered markets optimise for whatever agents are incentivised to do. Steered markets build governance into the market design — spending limits, quality requirements, safety constraints, and dispute resolution.
DeepMind's 'Virtual Agent Economies' paper argues that agent markets must be deliberately designed, not left to emerge. The alternative is a race to the bottom where ungoverned agents undercut governed ones.
HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS
PolicyLayer is steering infrastructure — the enforcement layer that makes governed agent markets possible.