Auctions on the Internet provide a new source of data on how bidding is influenced by the detailed rules of the auction. Here we study the second-price auction run by eBay and Amazon, in which a bidder submits a reservation price, and has this (maximum) price used to bid for him by proxy.[...]

Trust that suppliers and buyers will keep their word is a necessary ingredient to a wellfunctioning marketplace. Nowhere is the issue trickier than for electronic markets, wheretransactions tend to be geographically diffuse and anonymous, putting them out of the reach ofthe legal safeguards and...

The internet facilitates interactive and asynchronous communication among human and artificial agents in large bilateral markets. As a consequence, new institutional structures are emerging in the new economy. I discuss a few core problems associated with the economic design of internet markets...