Free!! Google and Facebook!!! We all know them, what to worry about? Everything! The giants of the internet are expanding into every corner of the economy, politics and our lives. They control the majority of digital advertising; Alphabet, Google's parent, and Facebook receive more than 60...

This dissertation studies problems of managing the operations in online platforms, especially when the behavior of agents on the platform is leveraged by users/platform managers to make better decisions. We study three distinct online platforms with unique challenges: in online crowdfunding...