The rapid advance in information technology now makes it feasible for sellers to condition their price offers on consumers’ prior purchase behavior. In this paper we examine when it is profitable to engage in this form of price discrimination when consumers can adopt strategies to protect...

Each Thursday, the <italic>New York Times</italic> publishes a column called "Economic Scene" on page C2 of the Business Section. The authorship of the column rotates among four individuals: Alan Krueger, Virginia Postrel, Jeff Madrick, and the author. This essay is about how he came to be a columnist and how he...

This article provides an overview of Google, focusing on its economic history, specifically on three topics of interest: the ad auction, the IPO auction and the role of economics at Google.

The rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web is transforming the way information is accessed and used. New models for distributing, sharing, linking, and marketing information are appearing. This volume examines emerging economic and business models for global publishing and...

Today most newly created textual, photographic, audio, and video content is available in digital form. Even older content that was not "born digital" can relatively easily converted to machine-readable formats. At same time, the world has become more networked, making it easy to transfer digital...