Online reputation mechanisms are emerging as a promising alternative to more established mechanisms for promoting trust and cooperative behavior, such as legally enforceable contracts. As information technology dramatically reduces the cost of accumulating, processing and disseminating consumer...

We study the strategy of bundling a large number of information goods, such as those increasingly available on the Internet, and selling them for a fixed price. We analyze the optimal bundling strategies for a multiproduct monopolist, and we find that bundling very large numbers of unrelated...

The Internet has signi.cantly reduced the marginal cost of producing and distributing digital information goods. It also coincides with the emergence of new competitive strategies such as large-scale bundling. In this paper, we show that bundling can create “economies of aggregation” for...

Many Internet intermediaries operate two-sided networks, that is, they provide platforms to bring together two types of participants, or quot;sides,quot; such as buyers and sellers. This paper develops a model that characterizes the intermediary's pricing in two-sided networks, the value created...

The Internet has significantly reduced the marginal cost of producing and distributing digital information goods. It also coincides with the emergence of new competitive strategies such as large scale bundling. In this paper, we show that bunding can create "economies of aggregation" for...

Online feedback mechanisms harness the bi-directional communication capabilities of the Internet in order to engineer large-scale word-of-mouth networks. Best known so far as a technology for building trust and fostering cooperation in online marketplaces, such as eBay, these mechanisms are...

This paper offers a systematic exploration of online feedback mechanism design issues in trading environments with opportunistic sellers, imperfect monitoring of a seller's effort level, and two possible transaction outcomes (corresponding to "high" and "low" quality respectively), one of which...

Online feedback mechanisms harness the bi-directional communication capabilities of the Internet in order to engineer large-scale word-of-mouth networks. Best known so far as a technology for building trust and fostering cooperation in online marketplaces, such as eBay, these mechanisms are...

Online feedback mechanisms harness the bidirectional communication capabilities of the Internet to engineer large-scale, word-of-mouth networks. Best known so far as a technology for building trust and fostering cooperation in online marketplaces, such as eBay, these mechanisms are poised to...