One potential disadvantage of social tagging systems is that due to the lack of a centralized vocabulary users may never manage to reach a consensus on the description of the entities (e.g., books, user or songs) in the system. Yet, previous research has provided interesting evidence that the...

A main characteristic of social media is that its diverse content, copiously generated by both standard outlets and general users, constantly competes for the scarce attention of large audiences. Out of this flood of information some topics manage to get enough attention to become the most...

We describe a new mechanism that induces accurate forecasts within an organization while reducing moral hazards and the stigma associated with negative opinions. It is based on the notion of identity escrow, whereby the identity of a forecaster is kept anonymous and only revealed when a number...

We present a novel methodology for identifying public knowledge and eliminating the biases it creates when aggregating information in small group settings. A two-stage mechanism consisting of an information market and a coordination game is used to reveal and adjust for individuals' public...

We study the endogenous dynamics of reputations in a system consisting of firms with long horizons that provide goods or services with varying levels of quality, and large numbers of customers who assign to them reputations on the basis of the quality levels that they experience when interacting...

We present a model for the diffusion of management fads and other technologies which lack clear objective evidence about their merits. The choices made by non-Bayesian adopters reflect both their own evaluations and the social in°uence of their peers. We show, both analytically and...

We present a new mechanism for encouraging risk taking within organizations that relies on the provision of decision insurance to managers. Since insurance increases the likelihood of free riding, we also introduce a technique that mitigates this moral hazard by automatically identifying the...

P2P clusters like the Grid and PlanetLab enable, in principle, the same statistical multiplexing efficiency gains for computing as the Internet provides for networking. The key unsolved problem is resource allocation. Existing solutions are not economically efficient and require high latency to...

Since the Internet is a public good and its numerous users are not charged in proportion to their use, it appears rational for individuals to consume bandwidth greedily while thinking that their actions have little effect on the overall performance of the Internet. Because every individual can...

We consider a market where buyers can access unbiased samples of private data by appropriately compensating the individuals to whom the data corresponds (the sellers) according to their privacy attitudes. We show how bundling the buyers' demand can decrease the price that buyers have to pay per...