Today's large scale networks such as the Internet emerge from the interconnection of privately owned networks and serve heterogeneous users with different service needs. The service providers of these networks are interested in maximizing their profit. Since the existing pricing scheme cannot...

Competition between network providers is believed to be a necessary condition for an efficient functioning Internet industry. It spurs technology innovation as network providers compete to provide better quality and enhanced services; improving consumers' welfare in the process. Given the impact...

Existing preference reasoning systems have been successful in simple domains. Broader success requires more natural and more expressive preference representations. This thesis develops a representation of logical preferences that combines numerical tradeoff ratios between partial outcome...

In many studies of market microstructure, theoretical analysis quickly becomes in tractable for all but the simplest stylized models. This thesis considers two alternative approaches, namely, the use of experiments with human subjects and simulations with intelligent agents, to address some of...