A key property of the World Wide Web is the possibility for firms toplace virtually costless links to third-party content as a substitute orcomplement to their own content. This ability to hyperlink has enablednew types of players, such as search engines and content aggregators, tosuccessfully...

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...

An important current trend in advertising is the replacement of traditional pay-per-exposure (pay-per-impression) pricing models with performance-based mechanisms in which advertisers pay only for measurable actions by consumers. Such pay-per-action (PPA) mechanisms are becoming the predominant...

Most online feedback mechanisms rely on voluntary reporting of privately observed outcomes. This introduces the potential for reporting bias, a situation where traders exhibit different propensities to report different outcome types to the system. Unless properly accounted for, reporting bias...

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...

We study settings where a number of sellers simultaneously offer vertically differentiated Vickrey auctions for imperfect substitute goods to unit-demand buyers. Vertical differentiation can arise from differences in item quality, item value certainty, seller reliability, or a combination of...

There is growing evidence that consumers are influenced by Internet-based opinion forums before making a variety of purchase decisions. Firms whose products are being discussed in such forums are therefore tempted to manipulate consumer perceptions by posting costly anonymous messages that...