We explore a scenario in which a monopolist producer of information goods seeks to maximize its profits in a market where consumer demand shifts frequently and unpredictably. The producer is free to set an arbitrarily complex price schedule-a function that maps the set of purchased items to a...

In an automated market for electronic goods new problems arise that have not been well studied previously. For example, information goods are very flexible. Marginal costs are negligible and nearly limitless bundling and unbundling of these items are possible, in contrast to physical goods....

Markets for digital information goods provide the possibility of exploring new and more complex pricing schemes, due to information goods' flexibility and negligible marginal cost. In this paper we compare the dynamic performance of price schedules of varying complexity under two different...

We explore a scenario in which a monopolist producer of information goods seeks to maximize its profits in a market where consumer demand shifts frequently and unpredictably. The producer is free to set an arbitrarily complex price schedule-a function that maps the set of purchased items to a...

In an economy in which a producer must learn the preferences of a consumer population, it is faced with a classic decision problem: when to explore and when to exploit. If the producer has a limited number of chances to experiment, it must explicitly consider the cost of learning (in terms of...

In an automated market for electronic goods new problems arise that have not been well studied previously. For example, information goods are very flexible. Marginal costs are negligible and nearly limitless bundling and unbundling of these items are possible, in contrast to physical goods....

Digital information economies require information goods producers to learn how to position themselves within a potentially vast product space. Further, the topography of this space is often nonstationary, due to the interactive dynamics of multiple producers changing their position as they try...

Commerce in information goods is one of the earliest emerging applications for intelligent agents in commerce. However, the fundamental characteristics of information goods mean that they can and likely will be offered in widely varying configurations. Participating agents will need to deal with...

Digital information economies require information goods producers to learn how to position themselves within a potentially vast product space. Further, the topography of this space is often nonstationary, due to the interactive dynamics of multiple producers changing their positions as they try...

Information goods can be reconfigured at low cost. Therefore, firms can choose how to differentiate their products at a frequency comparable to price changes. However, doing so effectively is complicated by uncertainty about customer preferences, compounded by the fact that the search for a good...