Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and abuyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthinessand trust. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedbackdetermine the gains from...

A great deal of late bidding has been observed on internet auctions such as ebay, which employ a second price auction with a fixed deadline. Much less late bidding has been observed on internet auctions such as those run by Amazon, which employ similar auction rules, but use an ending rule that...

Spieltheoretische Überlegungen zeigen, dass Reputationsmechanismen, wie sie auf Internet-Marktplattformen zur Anwendung kommen, prinzipiell geignet sind, Handel in großen anonymen Märkten zu erleichtern. Dies geil selbst dann, wenn die Marktteilnehmer ihre Identität jederzeit und kostenlos...

Many bidders in eBay employ bidding strategies that involve late bids, incremental bids, or both. Based on field evidence, we discuss teh manner in which late bids are caused both by sophisticated, strategic reasoning and by irrationality and inexperience, the interaction of late bidding and...

Auctions on the Internet provide a new source of data on how bidding is influenced by the detailed rules of the auction. Here we study the second-price auction run by eBay and Amazon, in which a bidder submits a reservation price, and has this (maximum) price used to bid for him by proxy.[...]

Trust that suppliers and buyers will keep their word is a necessary ingredient to a wellfunctioning marketplace. Nowhere is the issue trickier than for electronic markets, wheretransactions tend to be geographically diffuse and anonymous, putting them out of the reach ofthe legal safeguards and...

Online reputation -"feedback"- mechanism aim to mitigate the moral hazard problem associated with spatially distant exchange among strangers by providing traders with the type of information available in small groups, where members are frequently involved in another's dealings. We compare...