Die Nutzung des Internet zur Vermarktung und zum Vertrieb von touristischen Produkten hat seit den neunziger Jahren ein rasantes Wachstum erfahren und dazu geführt, dass im Bereich des internetbasierten Tourismus eine besonders ausgeprägte Konkurrenzsituation zwischen den Anbietern...

There is substantial empirical evidence and increasing recognition that not only outcomes, but also the procedures leading to them, can affect people' s utility from, and their reactions to, those decisions. However, there is still a large gap between numerous studies by non-economists (e.g.,...

This thesis explores economic aspects of virtual worlds by focusing on a specific massively multiplayer online role-playing game, RuneScape. In particular, it examines the similarities and differences between the virtual economics and real world economics, the economic understanding of RuneScape...

As massively multiplayer online games gain popularity, there has been a concomitant increase in their size and complexity, both technically and in terms of player usage. Quality assurance for such games takes up a major component of the development budget due to the painstaking work required to...

Chapter 1: Efficient Design of an Auction with Discrete Bid Levels This paper studies one of auction design issues: the choice of bid levels. Full efficiency is generally unachievable with a discrete auction. Since there may be more than one bidder who submits the same bid, the auction cannot...

In a survey of UK consumers, we elicited their willingness-to-accept (WTA) a discount for GM foods and willingness-to-pay (WTP) a premium for non-GM foods in order to assess their valuation of the non-GM characteristic in food products. Mean WTA exceeds mean WTP, a finding that suggests the...

Online gaming has become prevalent with the rise of the internet availability, where the gaming industry is experiencing a shift in business model in the last decade. The new model of microtransaction is to make players pay for extra content and advantages to compete against other players. In...