Articles and readings

Below are some suggested papers for your seminar work. These are only suggestions, you can choose any other paper, article or book chapter as long as I (Liad) approve it. All the topics for the seminar work, including topics that are based on one of the papers below, need my approval.

If you are interested in one of the paper, please leave a comment for reserving it for you (it does not mean that the topic is approved, just that you reserve the paper). You should also send me an email or come to my office hours (email me first) for an approval.

Note: papers or book chapters that have already been chosen by students are marked with (Taken) .

Books: Consider chapters from the following (online) books, or from other realted books.

1. “Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World”, By David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. The book is available online [full book] [individual chapters]. See also the references to the literature in this book.
   (Taken chapters: 17, 24,4,18)
2. “Algorithmic Game Theory”, the book is intended for computer scientists, but some chapters are accessible to non-computer scientists.  The entire book online by clicking here (username=agt1user, password=camb2agt).
3. “Auction Theory”, Vijay Krishna. Academic Press, 2002.
4. Milgrom, P: Putting auction theory to work, Cambridge University Press 2004.

Surveys:

• Roth, Alvin E. “The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimental Economics and Computation as Tools of Design Economics,” Econometrica, 70, 4, July 2002, 1341-1378.
• Matching, Allocation and Exchange of Discrete Resources, T. Sönmez, U. Ünver in Handbook of Social Economics, 2008.
• “An Overview of Social Networks and Economic Applications,” July 2009, forthcoming in the The Handbook of Social Economics, edited by J. Benhabib, A. Bisin, and M.O. Jackson, Elsevier Press.

Articles:

• Auctions:

1. Hal Varian “Position Auctions” [PDF]. International Journal of Industrial Organization.25(6),  2007. 1163-1178
2. (Taken) Michael Ostrovsky, Benjamin Edelman and Michael Schwarz, “Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords”  American Economic Review, v. 97(1), March 2007, pp. 242-259.
3. Jeremy Bulow, Jonathan Levin, and Paul Milgrom. “Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions“.  2009.
4. (Taken) Ilya Segal amd Przemyslaw Jeziorski “What Makes them Click: Empirical Analysis of Consumer Demand for Internet Search Advertising” . 2009.
5. (Taken) Jennifer Brown and John Morgan, “How much is a Dollar Worth? Tipping versus Equilibrium Coexistence on Competing Online Auction Sites“.
6. Jennifer Brown, Tanjim Hossain and John Morgan  “Shrouded Attributes and Information Suppression:Evidence from the Field”.
7. Chu, Chenghuan Sean; Leslie, Phillip; and Sorensen, Alan T.: Bundle-Size Pricing as an Approximation to Mixed Bundling
8. “Ascending Prices and Package Bidding: A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis,” with Yuanchuan Lien and John Kagel, Revised April 11, 2009. [Data files, Instructions]
9. (Taken)Strategic Bidder Behavior in Sponsored Search Auctions. Ben Edelman and  Michael Ostrovsky. Decision Support Systems, v.43(1), February 2007, pp.192-198.
10. “Skewed Bidding in Pay Per Action Auctions for Online Advertising“, Susan Athey, Nikhil Agarwal, David Yang. To appear, American Economic Review
11. “Position Auctions with Consumer Search“, Susan Athey and Glenn Ellison.
12. (Taken)Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans and Elena Katok, Regret and Feedback Information in First-Price Sealed-Bid Auctions, Management Science, 54(4), April 2008, pp. 808-819.
13. “Efficiency in Auctions with Private and Common Values: An Experimental Study” (Jacon K. Goeree and T. Offerman) American Economic Review, 92(3), June 2002, 625-643.
14. (Taken)Ockenfels, Axel and Alvin E. Roth, “Late and Multiple Bidding in Second-Price Internet Auctions: Theory and Evidence Concerning Different Rules for Ending an Auction,” Games and Economic Behavior, 55, 2006, 297-320
15. Katok, Elena, and Alvin E. Roth, “Auctions of Homogeneous Goods with Increasing Returns: Experimental Comparison of Alternative ‘Dutch’ Auctions,” Management Science, 50, 8, August 2004, 1044-1063.

• Social networks

1. (Taken) Stephen Morris, “Contagion“, Review of Economic Studies (2000) 67, 57-78
2. (Taken)Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks
   Stephen Leider, Markus Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, and Quoc-Anh Do
3. (Taken)“An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily, Minorities and Segregation,” Sergio Currarini, Matthew O. Jackson and Paolo Pin, in Econometrica Vol. 77, No. 4, 1003–1045, July 2009.
4. Self-Correcting Information Cascades” (with R. McKelvey, T. Palfrey, and B. Rogers) Review of Economic Studies, 74(3), July 2007, 733-762.

• Reputation and recommendation:

1. (Taken)P. Resnick, R. Zeckhauser, J. Swanson, and K. Lockwood. The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment. Experimental Economics. 9(2) pp. 79-101, 2006
2. (Taken)N. Miller, P. Resnick, and R. Zeckhauser. Eliciting Honest Feedback: The Peer-Prediction Method. Management Science, 51(9): 1359-1373, 2005.
3. (Taken)Gary E Bolton, Elena Katok and Axel Ockenfels How effective are online reputation mechanisms? An experimental study, Management Science 50(11) November 2004, pp. 1587-1602.
   

• Other:

1. (Taken) Roth, Alvin E., Tayfun Sönmez, and M. Utku Ünver, “Kidney Exchange,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119, 2, May, 2004, 457-488
2. (Taken)“Social Lending”.  [ pdf ] Ning Chen, Arpita Ghosh and Nicolas Lambert . In Proceedings of ACM EC 2009.
3. (PDF). “
   (Taken) Designing Incentives for Online Question and Answer Forums by Shaili Jain, Yiling Chen, and David C. Parkes. In the 10th ACM Electronic Commerce Conference (EC’09), pages 129-138, 2009.
4. (PDF)  An Options-Based Solution to the Sequential Auction Problem.by Adam I. Juda and David C. Parkes. In Artificial Intelligence 173, 2009, pages 876-899
5. (Taken)Optimizing Scrip Systems, Ian A. Kash, Eric J. Friedman, and Joseph Y. Halpern

• Some relevant links:

1. Ben Edelman’s homepage
2. Al Roth’s market design page, course blog
3. Internet advertising (The Economist) http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7138905
4. Peter Cramton’s market design course
5. Tim Roughgarden course on sponsored search
6. Workshop on ad auctions, Stanford 2009
7. Papers by Paul Milgrom