Commerce depends on buyers and sellers fulfilling their contractual obligations; mechanisms inducing such performance are essential to well functioning markets. Internet-enabled reputation mechanisms that collect and disseminate consumer feedback have emerged as prominent means for inducing...

Once purchased, information goods are often shared among groups of consumers. Computer software, for example, can be duplicated and passed from one user to the next. Journal articles can be copied. Music can be dubbed. In this paper, we ask whether these various forms of sharing undermine seller...

We analyze pricing strategies for digital information goods, such as those increasingly available via the Internet. Because perfect copies of such goods can be created and distributed almost costlessly, any single positive price for copies is likely to be socially inefficient. However, we show...

We employ the theory of incomplete contracts to examine the relationship between own­ership and investment in electronic networks such as the Internet and interorganiza­tional information systems. Electronic networks represent an institutional structure that has resulted from the introduction...

Blockchain technologies are designed to promote decentralization and self-governance in economic and social settings. In the context of platforms, an early claim of some proponents of these technologies was that blockchains would promote disintermediation, replacing intermediaries with...