The Internet revolution brought about significant changes in the availability of market information to consumers in many industries. This research examines technology-driven changes in market transparency, defined as the ability of market participants to observe information about products and prices. The objective is to develop a modeling and empirical basis for a theory of market transparency ...

The Trading Agent Competition (TAC) is an open-invitation forum designed to encourage research into electronic markets and trading agents. In this paper we present the Socrates trading agent and the strategies that were developed for and used in the TAC Supply Chain Management game as part of the 2004 competition. The resulting behaviour and performance in the TAC competition as well as in a se...

In this paper, we extend field experiments of real money prediction markets to the problem of forecasting the success of a new product. We collect forecasts using a traditional survey mechanism and a market mechanism. Our results suggest that market prices summarize the information contained in survey forecasts and improve those forecasts by reducing the variability of the forecast. However, we...

Abstract This paper presents and discusses a number of criteria for the design and implementation of electronic market servers. It first briefly reviews a number of electronic markets currently operational over the internet then offers some ideas on the types of new markets that may become successful. It then presents the design criteria for market servers, necessary to support these virtual ma...

With the advent of the Internet, we have seen existing markets transform and new ones emerge. In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon by theorizing about the role that IT plays in affecting market information, transparency and market structure. In particular, we introduce a new theoretical framework which uncovers the process and the forces that, together with IT, f...

Low search costs in Internet markets can be used by consumers to find low prices, but can also be used by retailers to monitor competitors’ prices. This price monitoring can lead to price matching, resulting in dampened price competition and higher prices in some cases. This paper analyzes price data for 316 bestselling, computer, and random book titles gathered from 32 retailers between August...

& Impacts on markets and organizations & Adoption in eMarkets and interorganizational information systems & Interorganizational coordination and integration & Vertical integration and hybrid forms & Electronic intermediaries & Disintermediation/mediation & New organizational forms & Online buyer and supplier behavior & Business models and market design & Market efficiency and price dispersion &...

Reputation mechanisms offer an efficient way of building the necessary level of trust in electronic markets. In the absence of independent verification authorities that can reveal the true outcome of a transaction, market designers have to insure that it is in the best interest of the trading agents to report the behavior in transactions truthfully. As opposed to side-payment schemes that corre...

We champion the view that a richer understanding of electronic markets is obtained when their implications for consumers are jointly studied from social, economic, and psychological perspectives. We adopt this perspective triad to build a Social– Economic–Psychological (SEP) Model of technology adoption and usage, and apply the model to understand and explain the behavior of online investors. T...

We describe MARI (Multi-Attribute Resource Intermediary), a project being conducted in the Software Agents group at the MIT Media Lab, and the challenges and issues we are facing in its design and implementation. MARI is an intermediary architecture intended as a generalized platform for the specification and brokering of heterogeneous goods and services. The project reflects our vision of how ...