In an economy in which a producer must learn the preferences of a consumer population, it is faced with a classic decision problem: when to explore and when to exploit. If the producer has a limited number of chances to experiment, it must explicitly consider the cost of learning (in terms of...

We explore a scenario in which a monopolist producer of information goods seeks to maximize its profits in a market where consumer demand shifts frequently and unpredictably. The producer is free to set an arbitrarily complex price schedule-a function that maps the set of purchased items to a...

Information goods can be reconfigured at low cost. Therefore, firms can choose how to differentiate their products at a frequency comparable to price changes. However, doing so effectively is complicated by uncertainty about customer preferences, compounded by the fact that the search for a good...

We explore a scenario in which a monopolist producer of information goods seeks to maximize its profits in a market where consumer demand shifts frequently and unpredictably. The producer is free to set an arbitrarily complex price schedule-a function that maps the set of purchased items to a...

In an economy in which a producer must learn the preferences of a consumer population, it is faced with a classic decision problem: when to explore and when to exploit. If the producer has a limited number of chances to experiment, it must explicitly consider the cost of learning (in terms of...

Digital information economies require information goods producers to learn how to position themselves within a potentially vast product space. Further, the topography of this space is often nonstationary, due to the interactive dynamics of multiple producers changing their positions as they try...

Dramatic increases in the capabilities and decreases in the costs of computers and communication networks have fomented revolutionary thoughts in the scholarly publishing community. In one dimension, traditional pricing schemes and product packages are being modified or replaced. We designed and...

Markets for digital information goods provide the possibility of exploring new and more complex pricing schemes, due to information goods' flexibility and negligible marginal cost. In this paper we compare the dynamic performance of price schedules of varying complexity under two different...

Information goods can be reconfigured at low cost. Therefore, firms can choose how to differentiate their products at a frequency comparable to price changes. However, doing so effectively is complicated by uncertainty about customer preferences, compounded by the fact that the search for a good...

Dramatic increases in the capabilities and decreases in the costs of computers and communication networks have fomented revolutionary thoughts in the scholarly publishing community. In one dimension, traditional pricing schemes and product packages are being modified or replaced. We designed and...