In the emerging age of electronic commerce, it is of paramount importance to design mechanisms that ensure timely and reliable transactions in cyberspace. This is an important problem given the bursty nature of Internet congestion, which leads to large variability in the risk and cost of...

Much has been said about the possibility that in the information age, ease of entry and global access will lead to market characteristics with few inefficiencies. While several arguments have been articulated on the nature of markets and electronic commerce, little is known about their...