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Home > Research > Themes > Incentive-Centered Design
Incentive-Centered Design
We believe that careful attention to individual incentives can lead to vast improvements in the design of systems that rely on information, communication and collaboration technologies to mediate interactions. We draw on theories of rational decision making, game-theoretic models of strategic interaction, and economic, psychological and social theories of motivation to understand the likely behaviors of individuals in response to various system configurations. Based on that understanding, we create or identify design options that meet various normative criteria, such as efficiency and fairness. One hallmark of our approach is that we seek to have an impact on designs of real systems-- our projects typically are inspired by a practical problem, move into the realm of abstract theorizing, and end by influencing the design of fielded systems.
Researchers
- Yan Chen Professor
- Thomas Finholt Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation
- Brian Kahin Visiting Research Investigator and Visiting Adjunct Professor
- John L. King William Warner Bishop Collegiate Professor of Information
Vice Provost for Academic Information
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
- Paul Resnick Professor
- Rahul Sami Assistant Professor
Current Projects
Collaborative Research: Social Identity, Mechanism Design and Equilibrium Selection
This is an interdisciplinary research program in experimental economics and social psychology at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Dallas. The research advances knowledge in both psychology and economics by integrating our understanding of psychological processes associated with social identity (e.g., in-group bias and group norms) with our understanding of individual decision-making in the economic domain (e.g., social
preferences, mechanism design, and equilibrium selection). The project draws on the theory and methods developed in social psychology and experimental economics to bridge the two bodies of work and inform us of the relationship between social identity and social preferences. The results of the research should inform us about the role of social identity in eliciting decisions from individuals about maximizing social welfare and about placing organizational goals above self-interest.
Contact: Yan Chen (yanchen@umich.edu)
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Computational Foundations of Information Markets
Information markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets can predict, for example, the outcome of elections with greater accuracy than most polls.
This project aims to strengthen the strategic and computational foundations of information markets.
The goal is to develop a model of markets that cannot be "gamed" by certain traders to gain an advantage over others, that accounts for the effects of external incentives on the behavior of traders (i.e., when traders have preferences other than simply maximizing their market return), and that characterizes how fast and efficiently markets can compute and communicate.
Contact: Rahul Sami (rsami@umich.edu)
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Dynamic Stability of Mechanisms
This stream of research incorporates bounded rationality and learning into the static mechanism design framework. In particular, the role of supermodularity in learning and convergence is examined. Recent publications of interest include:
- Yan Chen and Robert Gazzale, "When Does Learning in Games Generate Convergence to Nash Equilibria? The Role of Supermodularity in an Experimental Setting," in American Economic Review (forthcoming).
- Yan Chen, "Dynamic Stability of Nash-Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms: Reconciling Theory with Experiments," forthcoming in Experimental Business Research, Vol. II., Zwick, Rami, and Amnon Rapoport (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers: Norwell, MA and Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
- Yan Chen, "Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms for Pure Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Literature," forthcoming in The Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edited by Charles Plott and Vernon Smith.
- Yan Chen, "A Family of Supermodular Mechanisms Implementing Lindahl Allocations for Quasilinear Environments," in Economic Theory, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2002): 773-790.
- Yan Chen and Fang-Fang Tang, "Learning and Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms for Public Goods Provision: An Experimental Study," in the Journal of Political Economy, 106 (1998): 633-662.
- Yan Chen and Charles R. Plott, "The Groves-Ledyard Mechanism: An Experimental Study of Institutional Design," in the Journal of Public Economics, 59 (1996): 335-364.
Contact: Yan Chen (yanchen@umich.edu)
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Past Projects
Canning Spam
Researchers explored an alternative approach to spam based on economic rather than technological or regulatory screening mechanisms. They employed a model of E-mail value which supported two intuitive notions: mechanisms designed to promote valuable communication can often outperform those designed merely to block wasteful communication, and designers of such mechanisms should shift focus away from the information in the message to the information known to the sender. The researchers then used principles of information asymmetry to cause people who knowingly misuse communication to incur higher costs than those who do not. In certain cases, though not all, they showed this approach left recipients better off than even an idealized or "perfect" filter that costs nothing and makes no mistakes. Their mechanism also accounted for individual differences in opportunity costs, and allowed for bi-directional wealth transfers while facilitating both sender signaling and recipient screening. This work was done by Marshall Van Alstyne and computer science doctoral students Rick Wash and Thede Loder.
Contact: Marshall Van Alstyne (mvanalst@umich.edu)
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CommunityLab: Motivating Contribution to the Public Good in Online Communities
Researchers draw on theories and data from social psychology and public goods economics to drive design decisions about online communities. Their goal is to increase participants' contributions to the communal good. This is joint work with Bob Kraut, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl, and Joe Konstan, funded by the National Science Foundation. The first paper from this project, describing campaigns to try to encourage members of MovieLens to submit more ratings, was presented at the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2004 conference. As predicted by theory, individuals contributed more when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and moderately challenging goals, but other predictions were not borne out. In particular, a puzzling result was that reminding individuals that their ratings help either themselves or others prompted fewer rather than more ratings. For information on other work that is part of this project, see the CommunityLab Web site. Also participating in this research are doctoral students Xiaomu Zhou of the School of Information and Xin Li of the Department of Economics.
Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)
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Computational Markets for Decentralization of Complex Time-Dependent Activities
Researchers study market mechanisms for solving decentralized scheduling problems and use game theory and evolutionary modeling to develop agents that can negotiate solutions to such problems.
Contact: Michael Wellman (wellman@umich.edu)
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Conference on Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy
(AKKE)
An international conference examined how the creation and organization of knowledge is changing and how this change affects the evolution and growth of the knowledge economy. The conference brought together for the first time a large body of research that gave participants and the audience a coherent, high-level perspective on what is known about how information and communication technologies and economic context are affecting knowledge processes and activities, how the economics of knowledge are changing with the emergence of distributed systems of innovation and learning, and the challenge of crafting public policies to advance the generation and effective use of knowledge.
Contact: Brian Kahin (kahin@umich.edu)
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Design of Computer-Assisted Market Mechanisms
Over the years, researchers have applied work on automated markets for complex transactions to a DARPA project investigating the use of markets to improve telecommunications network survivability in the face of disruptive attacks MARX) and to a National Science Foundation project concerning scheduling of complex time-dependent activities (DEXTER). Researchers collaborate with the Trading Agent Competition team in the Artificial Intelligence Lab. They also undertake laboratory experiments on the design of package bidding markets and on the design of matching systems for such applications as college housing, school choice, and segregation problems. Jeff MacKie-Mason and Yan Chen, computer science faculty Mike Wellman and Ed Durfee, and doctoral students Anna Osepayshvili of SI and Dan Reeves of computer science, conducted the research. Some research papers published in this area include:
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Michael P. Wellman, "Computational Markets," in K. Judd and L. Tesfatsion, Handbook of Computational Economics, vol. 2 (forthcoming, North-Holland, 2005)
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "An Experimental Study of House Allocation Mechanisms," in Economics Letters (forthcoming)
- Daniel M. Reeves, Michael. P. Wellman, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, and Anna Osepayshvili, "Exploring Bidding Strategies for Market-Based Scheduling," in Decision Support Systems
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Anna Osepayshvili, Daniel M. Reeves, and Michael P. Wellman, "Price Prediction Strategies for Market-Based Scheduling," 18th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, Whistler, British Columbia, (June 2004)
- Yan Chen and Kan Takeuch, "Multi-Object Auctions with Package Bidding: An Experimental Comparison of iBEA and Vickrey," 2004
- Yan Chen, Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, and Peter Morgan, "Matching and Segregation: An Experimental Study," Manuscript, 2004
- Yan Chen, Peter Katuscak, and Emre Ozdenoren, "Sealed Bid Auctions with Ambiguity: Theory and Experiments," Manuscript, 2003
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "School Choice: An Experimental Study," Manuscript, 2003
- Christopher H. Brooks, Robert S. Gazzale, Rajarshi Das, Jeffrey O. Kephart, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, and Edmund H. Durfee, "Model Selection in an Information Economy: Choosing What to Learn," in Computational Intelligence, vol. 18, no. 4 (November 2002): 566-582
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "Improving Efficiency of On-Campus Housing: An Experimental Study," in American Economic Review, vol. 92, no. 5 (2002): 1669-86
- M.P. Wellman, W.E. Walsh, P.R. Wurman and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, "Auction Protocols for Decentralized Scheduling," in Games and Economic Behavior, vol 35, 2001. Revised and republished as an extended abstract in Artificial Intelligence, 2002
- Jeffrey O. Kephart, Rajarshi Das, and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, "Two-Sided Learning in an Agent Economy for Information Bundles," in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000
- Christopher H. Brooks, Scott Fay, Rajarshi Das, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey O. Kephart, and Edmund Durfee, "Automated Strategy Searches in an Electronic Goods Market: Learning and Complex Price Schedules," in Proceedings of Electronic Commerce, 1999 (EC-99), ACM Press, Denver, CO, November 1999
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Kimberly White, "Evaluating and Selecting Digital Payment Mechanisms," in Interconnection and the Internet, G. Rosston and D. Waterman, eds. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997: 113-134.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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Design of Reputation Systems
A reputation system gives people information about others' past performance. It can enhance an online interaction environment by helping people decide whom to trust, encouraging people to be more trustworthy, and discouraging those who are not trustworthy from participating. This project has employed game theoretic analysis to model the impact of name changes on the functioning of reputation systems. The SI analysis demonstrated an inherent social cost of cheap pseudonyms and also proposed cryptographic techniques for allowing anonymous but unchangeable pseudonyms. Researchers have also conducted empirical analysis of eBay's feedback system, showing that reputations are informative for buyers and by performing a controlled field experiment to test the impact of reputation on seller revenues. Current analyses focus on the impact of prior feedback on feedback-giving strategies for buyers, and on seller participation decisions. A second line of inquiry has focused on the provision of feedback. In The
Market for Evaluations, researchers analyzed the possibilities for incentive
mechanisms in which later consumers compensate early evaluators of an item,
concluding that any two of three desirable properties could be achieved. That
paper also predicted that, in the absence of incentive mechanisms, items that
get poor early evaluations may become buried treasures that never receive
additional evaluations. In empirical work on usage of the Web site Slashdot, the research team found that certain kinds of messages, including those that get early negative evaluations, tend not to get enough attention from moderators. Slashdot is introducing changes in its moderation system partially in response to those findings. Even if an optimal allocation of evaluators is made, incentives may still be required to induce effort and honest reporting of those evaluations. The team has designed mechanisms, based on proper scoring rules, to elicit effort and honest reporting of numeric ratings. Current work focuses on extending these mechanisms to situations where evaluators choose which items to evaluate, and on field trials of the scoring system with academic reviewing processes. This project is joint work with Richard Zeckhauser. Participating in this research are SI doctoral students Tapan Khopkar and Cliff Lampe.
Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)
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Economic Design of Information Goods
Investigators address a number of design questions for the emerging information economy and new communications and social networking technologies. In one project (PEAK), they implemented a wide-scale field experiment in pricing and usage of digital library accessto scholarly journals. In another, they collaborated with researchers in computer science and from IBM to design economically intelligent machine algorithms for the dynamic configuration of information goods and for discovering effective pricing structures for them. Papers published in this research area are listed here:
- Robert S. Gazzale and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Endogenous Differentiation of Information Goods Under Uncertainty, ACM
Electronic Commerce 2001, Tampa.
- Jeffrey O. Kephart, Rajarshi Das, Christopher H. Brooks, Edmund H.
Durfee, Robert S. Gazzale and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Pricing Information Bundles in a Dynamic Environment, ACM Electronic
Commerce 2001, Tampa.
- Christopher H. Brooks, Rajarshi Das, Jeffrey O. Kephart, Jeffrey K.
MacKie-Mason, Robert S. Gazzale, and Edmund H. Durfee, Information
Bundling in a Dynamic Environment, Proceedings of the IJCAI-01
Workshop on Economic Agents, Models, and Mechanisms, Seattle, WA, August,
2001.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Juan F. Riveros, and Robert S. Gazzale,
Pricing and Bundling Electronic Information Goods: Experimental Evidence, The Internet Upheaval: Raising Questions, Seeking Answers in Communications Policy, B. Compaine and I. Vogelsang, eds., MIT Press, 2000.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Juan Riveros, Economics and Electronic Access to Scholarly Information, Internet Publishing and Beyond: The Economics of Digital Information and Intellectual Property, B. Kahin and H. Varian, eds. MIT Press, 2000.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Juan F. Riveros, Maria S. Bonn, and Wendy P.
Lougee, The PEAK Experiment: Usage and Economic Behavior, D-lib Magazine, vol. 5, no. 7/8, July/August 1999.
- Maria S. Bonn, Wendy P. Lougee, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, and Juan F.
Riveros, A Report on the PEAK Experiment: Context and Design, D-lib Magazine, vol. 5, no. 6, June 1999.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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Economic Design of the Internet
In the early 1990s, economic analysis of Internet engineering came into being. Researchers have addressed the design of usage-based pricing to manage network congestion, multiple quality-of-service provisions, Web caching to reduce delays, and an economic approach to routing and address assignment. Below are papers published in this research area.
- Yan Chen, "An Experimental Study of the Serial and Average Cost Pricing Mechanisms," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 87, Issues 9-10 (September 2003): 2305-2335.
- Yan Chen and Yuri Khoroshilov, "Learning Under Limited Information,"
- Games and Economic Behavior,
44 (July 2003): 1-25.
- Yan Chen and Laura Razzolini, "Congestion and Cost Allocation Mechanisms for Distributed Networks: An Experimental Study," 2003.
- Thomas, Panagiotis, Demosthenis Teneketzis, and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, "A Market-Based Approach to Optimal Resource Allocation in Integrated-Services connection-Oriented Networks," Operations
Research, 50:4 (July-August 2002).
- Terence P. Kelly, Sugih Jamin, and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason,
"Variable QoS From Shared Web Caches: User-Centered Design and
Value-Sensitive Replacement," in Internet Service Quality Economics, Lee McKnight, ed., MIT Press, 2001.
- Yee Man Chan, Jonathan Womer, Sugih Jamin, and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason,
"The Case for Market-based Push Caching," Proceedings of the
Second International Conference on Telecommunications and Electronic
Commerce, Nashville, Tennessee, November 1999.
- T.P. Kelly, Y.M. Chan, S. Jamin and J. MacKie-Mason, "Biased
Replacement Policies for Web Caches: Differential Quality-of-Service and
Aggregate User Value," Proceedings of the Fourth International Web
Caching Workshop, San Diego, CA, March 31-April 2, 1999 (refereed).
- Rekhter, Yakov, Resnick, Paul and Bellovin, Steve, "Financial
Incentives for Route Aggregation and Efficient Address Utilization in the
Internet," in Coordinating the Internet, Brian Kahin and James
Keller, eds. MIT Press. 1997
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Scott Shenker, and Hal Varian, "Network
Architecture and Content Provision: An Economic Analysis," in The
Internet and Telecommunications Policy, G. Brock and G. Rosston, eds.
Lawrence Erlbaum: 1996. Also published as "Service Architecture and
Content Provision: The Network Provider as Editor," in
Telecommunications Policy, vol. 20, no. 3, April 1996: 203-17.
- Liam Murphy, John Murphy, and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, "Feedback
And Efficiency In ATM Networks," Proceedings of the International
Conference on Communications (ICC '96). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 1996.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, Liam Murphy, and John Murphy, "The Role of Responsive Pricing in the Internet," in Internet Economics, J. Bailey and L. McKnight, eds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996: 279-304. Also published in "The Journal of Electronic Publishing," 1996.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian, "Some Economics of the Internet," in Networks, Infrastructure and the New Task for Regulation, W. Sichel, ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian, "Economic FAQs About the
Internet," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 3
(Summer 1994): 75-96. Reprinted (with revisions) in Dr. Dobbs Journal, vol. 19 (Winter 1994). Reprinted with extensive updating and revisions in the Journal of Electronic Publishing, 1995; in Research Milestones on the Information Highway, S. Kiesler, ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996; in Quill, vol. 84, no. 9 (Nov. 1996); also published in Internet Economics, J. Bailey and L. McKnight, eds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian, "Pricing Congestible
Resources," IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 13, no. 7, Sept. 1995: 1141-49. Reprinted in Annales des Ponts et
Chaussees as "La tarification des ressources de reeseax susceptibles de congestion: Le cas d'Internet," vol 96, October-December 2000:
49-60.
- Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian, "Pricing the Internet," in Public Access to the Internet, Brian Kahin and James Keller, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1995: 269-314.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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Incentives for Data Producers to Create Archive-Ready Data Sets
This demonstration project identifies barriers and develops alternative incentive mechanisms for data producers to deposit archive-ready data sets in an archive. By archive-ready, researchers mean data sets that meet an archive's deposit requirements and submission guidelines. Archives rely heavily on data producers to provide complete and accurate documentation when they deposit data and to comply with other requirements, such as file structures and formats, transfer media, and requirements for protection of privacy and confidentiality. The entire enterprise of digital archiving assumes some degree of cooperation between producers of digital information and the archives. When data producers do not comply with submission guidelines, archives incur additional costs in preparing the data for preservation and dissemination, experience delays between ingest and release, and assume risks if data that do not meet quality assurance standards are released. The research literature and years of experience with data deposits at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research indicate that, as a rule, current incentives are insufficient to overcome the obstacles that data producers report. A multidisciplinary team of experts in digital archiving, social science research, and
experimental economics at the School of Information and ICPSR
are investigating ways to increase cooperation between producers and archives. With their government partner, the National Institute of Justice, researchers use multiple methods (surveys and experiments) to identify barriers to compliance, revise guidelines and responsibilities, and develop and test alternative incentive mechanisms. Ultimately, more cooperation between data producers and archives will reduce the costs of archiving, accelerate the release of data, and improve its quality. The SI research also will inform development of standards and guidelines for producer-archive relationships.
Contact: Margaret Hedstrom (hedstrom@umich.edu)
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Incentives in Scientific Collaboration
- Birnholtz, J.P., and Bietz, M. (2003), "Data at Work: Supporting Sharing in Science and Engineering," in Proceedings of GROUP 2003, Sanibel Island, Florida, November 9-12, 2003.
- Birnholtz, J.P., Horn, D.B., Finholt, T.A., and Bae, S.J. (2004), "The
Effects of Cash, Electronic, and Paper Gift Certificates as Respondent
Incentives for a Web-Based Survey of Technologically Sophisticated Respondents," Social Science Computing Review, 22(3), 347-354.
Contact: Thomas Finholt (finholt@umich.edu)
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Information Diffusion Models with Application to Intelluctual Property and Social Welfare
The problem of achieving both information growth and information diffusion presented a difficult social tradeoff: policies that encourage investment in creating information frequently discourage widespread access. Property rights conferred to authors and inventors, for example, stimulated creation by conferring the right to exclude. This project applied this idea to intellectual property and contract law specifically regarding open-source software. It addressed the question, "What software licensing schemes produce the greatest social welfare?"
Contact: Marshall Van Alstyne (mvanalst@umich.edu)
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Information Productivity in Organizations
(IPO)
This Intel-sponsored research looked into information flows and management practices as they contributed to economic output.
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Intellectual Property Regimes to Promote Innovation in and Distribution of Information Goods
This research balanced the economic benefits of creation incentives and efficient distribution in order that more information might be available more widely. It also examined the competing economic strategies of, for example, proprietary versus open-source software, affecting who might have access to software, when, and at what price.
Contact: Marshall Van Alstyne (mvanalst@umich.edu)
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Knowledge Management and Productivity Heuristics
(Knowledge MPH)
The flow of information across organizational boundaries, the "balkanization" of database access, and the incentives to promote disclosure might all be expected to influence output, but the question is how. This empirical study collected data to test the influence of these and other factors.
Contact: Marshall Van Alstyne (mvanalst@umich.edu)
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Matching
The centralized matching papers study the efficient allocation of indivisible goods to individuals and propose allocation mechanisms superior to some used in the real world. The decentralized matching paper examines the effects of institutionalized segregation on matching success rate and allocation efficiency.
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "An Experimental Study of House Allocation Mechanisms," Economics Letters (forthcoming).
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "Improving Efficiency of On-Campus Housing: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, vol. 92, no. 5 (2002): 1669-86.
- Yan Chen and Tayfun Sonmez, "School Choice: An Experimental Study," Manuscript, 2003.
- Yan Chen, Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, and Peter Morgan, "Matching and Segregation: An Experimental Study," Manuscript, 2004.
Contact: Yan Chen (yanchen@umich.edu)
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Measuring Information's Contribution: Research on Value and Productivity
This project evaluated how to measure information value and how to evaluate information productivity. Researchers developed a proof-theoretic model by combining concepts of utility and time-discounted value from economics and an algorithmic model from computer science. They also gathered data –- via software monitors and interviews -- on information management practices that contributed to productivity. Study benefits included a better understanding of information productivity, use of person- rather than firm-level data, and newly derived integration metrics.
Contact: Marshall Van Alstyne (mvanalst@umich.edu)
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Michigan Adaptive Resource eXchange
(MARX)
The project was a computational market system model for large-scale information systems. MARX demonstrated the ability of computational market mechanisms to improve the adaptivity, flexibility, and survivability of such systems. The research also addressed important technical issues in bidding protocols, network resource allocation, and the dynamics of survivable system behavior.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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Pricing Electronic Access to Knowledge
(PEAK)
This was a one-year experimental service for electronic journal delivery and pricing research that provided access to more than 1,100 journals published by Elsevier Science in the physical, life, and social sciences.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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Program for Research on the Information Economy
(PRIE)
Scholars, students, and firms joined to research Internet economics, digital content, electronic commerce, and computational markets.
Contact: Jeff MacKie-Mason (jmm@umich.edu)
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RideNow: Dynamic Ride Sharing
Researchers are developing and pilot testing ride sharing services that dynamically match riders with rides. The research focuses on how to motivate participation and reduce coordination costs in such services. It also addresses the scalability, extensibility, and privacy implications of different system architectures. A paper on "Impersonal SocioTechnical Capital" puts the idea into context. This is joint work with Marc Smith at Microsoft and Lorrie Cranor at Carnegie Mellon University. Participating in this research are doctoral students Libby Hemphill and Rick Wash.
Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)
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Sealed Bid Auctions and Package Bidding
Researchers evaluated two common auction mechanisms where the distribution of bidder valuation was unknown. The second paper evaluated various package auction mechanisms.
- Yan Chen, Peter Katuscak, and Emre Ozdenoren, "Sealed Bid Auctions with Ambiguity: Theory and Experiments," Manuscript, 2003.
- Yan Chen and Kan Takeuchi, "Multi-Object Auctions with Package Bidding: An Experimental Comparison of iBEA and Vickrey," 2004.
Contact: Yan Chen (yanchen@umich.edu)
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Strategic Positioning in Information Product Space
Economic analysis and computer simulation are used to develop economic theory and to create computational agents that can make strategic decisions about information product positioning in a complex, rapidly shifting market.
Contact: Ed Durfee (durfee@umich.edu)
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Home > Research > Themes > Incentive-Centered Design
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Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, the Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science, is well known for his pioneering work on the economics of the Internet, and for his work on the economics of other information technologies and of competition in high-technology markets.
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