This is a set for frequently asked questions (and answers) about the economic, institutional, and technological structure of the Internet. The authors describe the current state of the Internet, discuss some of the pressing economic and regulatory problems, and speculate about future developments.

Three pioneers of quantitative finance have now been justly honored: Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, and William Sharpe received the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1990. From today's perspective it is hard to understand what finance was like before portfolio theory. Here I attempt to provide...

Hal Varian, of UC Berkeley, points out that randomization could help avoid the adverse selection in the Treasury's proposed auctions of mortgage backed securities.

There are at least two competing visions for the future National Information Infrastructure. One model is based on the application-blind architecture of the Internet; the other is based on the application- aware architecture of cable TV systems and online services. Awareness is the extent to...

This paper shows, using a standard CAPM model of security prices in a world market, that even small countries can affect the price of domestically issued risky securities, while large countries can affect the prices of all securities. As a result, countries have the incentive to set tax rates...

I show that the Pigovian solution to a simple externalities problem and a particular Coasian solution can be viewed as competitive equilibria from different initial endowments. I also describe the ``compensation mechanism,'' a mechanism that implements either the Coasian or Pigovian solution as...