In this paper we study stochastic dynamic games with many players; these are a fundamental model for a wide range of economic applications. The standard solution concept for such games is Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE), but it is well known that MPE computation becomes intractable as the...

Aseller in an online marketplace with an effective reputation mechanism should expect that dishonest behavior results in higher payments now whereas honest behavior results in a better reputation--and thus higher payments--in the future. We study the Window Aggregation Mechanism, a widely used...

Two very different contractual structures are commonly observed inservice industries with congestion effects: service level guarantees(SLGs) and best effort (BE) service. We analyze the impact of thesecontractual agreements on market outcomes in oligopolistic industries.First, we consider a...

This thesis addresses a problem at the nexus of engineering, computer science, and economics: in large scale, decentralized systems, how can we efficiently allocate scarce resources among competing interests? On one hand, constraints are imposed on the system designer by the inherent...

In this paper we study the implications of service level guarantees (SLGs) in a model of oligopoly competition where providers compete to deliver a service to congestion-sensitive consumers. The SLG is a contractual obligation on the part of the service provider: regardless of how many customers...