A growing number of firms are strategically utilizing IT and the Internet to provide online services to consumers who buy their products. Online services differ from traditional services, such as maintenance services, because they often promote interactivity among the firm’s customers and...

Game theoretic modeling involves making assumptions on agents' infinite hierarchies of beliefs. These assumptions are understood to be only approximately satisfied in the actual situation. Thus, the significance of game theoretic predictions depend on robustness properties of the solution...

"In 1968, Hardin argued that all commonly-owned resources would tragically be depleted unless private ownership was granted. There are many case studies which prove Hardin wrong. Common-pool resources have been managed with success. However, this success does not imply (as some believe) that...

This paper is a theoretical analysis of incentive setting via civil litigation, with a focus on incentives for care in activities that may be harmful to others (torts). It makes two main contributions: one directly policy-relevant, one conceptual. In most existing research, litigation is modeled...

This dissertation uses game theoretic models to examine the effects of agent anonymity on markets for goods and for information. In open, anonymous settings, such as the Internet, anonymity is relatively easy to obtain --- oftentimes another email address is sufficient. By becoming anonymous,...

With the world full of situations in which information that is potentially useful to decision-making is dispersed among various individuals, research into how this information can be efficiently shared has been the focus of a large body of research in recent years. Intuitively, it seems that...

In the first section, a firm with two servers must decide how to dynamically route arriving customers and allocate servers to two separate queues. The servers may work together or separately, and we provide insights into how the firm should optimally route customers and assign servers to queues....

Simultaneous ascending auctions present agents with various strategic problems, depending on preference structure. As long as bids represent non-repudiable offers, submitting noncontingent bids to separate auctions entails an exposure problem: bidding to acquire a bundle risks the possibility of...

We study a manufacturer's strategic use of a dual-sourcing option when facing suppliers who possess private information about their likelihood of experiencing a supply disruption. The manufacturer can diversify its supply by ordering from both suppliers, but we find that the cost of doing so is...

Computer automation has the potential, just starting to be realized, of transforming thedesign and operation of markets, and the behaviors of agents trading in them. We discussthe possibilities for automating markets, presenting a broad conceptual frameworkcovering resource allocation as well as...