The Economist, Prevent excessive concentration online, 28 June 2018
This is an article from this week's Economist about the ways to reduce concentration in digital markets. We will chat about this article during Thursday.
Hess and Ostrom, Overview of the Knowledge
This is an easy to read introduction about commons. I will read in class -- time permitting -- pages 4 and 5 (brief history), 7 (common-pool principles), 9 (the table on types of goods), 10 and 11 (the tragicomedy of the commons).
Rochet and Tirole, 2003
This paper started a rich stream of research about the Economics of platforms. We will read the introduction, the results on page 1013 and the mini-cases on operating systems and video games.
Katz and Shapiro, Network Externalities, 1985
We will read in class the first few pages (424 to some of 426) to see the basic reasons for network externalities and the final page (439) the summarizes the results and is starting to look at public policy issues. We will skip the actual model.
Malone, Yates, Benjamin, The Logic of Electronic
Short and clear, the only paper in this collection not coming from an Economics journal. A 1989 paper that uses Transaction Cost Economics to predict electronic commerce.
Williamson, MARKETS AND HIERARCHIES
We will read just a few sentences from this paper -- the highlighted text explains the deeper reasons for transaction costs.
Coase, THE NATURE OF THE FIRM, 1937
This paper from 1937 is the basis for Transaction Cost Economics -- an economic theory that has been used to predict electronic commerce. We will read the highlighted paragraphs of sections I and II.
Roth and Sotomayor, Two Sided Matching
Fama (the previous paper) shows us that markets are efficient by changing prices to reflect immediately all available information (the strong version of his efficiency hypothesis). But what about information in markets that do not have prices? One such market is the market for medical internships in the US. The matching between hospitals and medical graduates is a famous example of market matching and an opportunity to have a little bit of behavioral Economics in this list of papers. I will read in the class the first few pages of this paper and will give one simple example of truth-inducing mechanisms, second price bidding as described on pages 519-20.
Run-A-Match, 2016
Just an example of matching hospitals and medical graduates, to make the Roth and Sotomayor paper (4b) clearer.
Fama, Efficient Capital Markets, 1970
I am going to just browse through this complex paper, mostly on the highlighted paragraphs. The ideas are very important -- how information is central to markets and sets prices, but testing these ideas scientifically is, at least, difficult, some say impossible. A nice current summary of the ideas is offered by the UK Open University at http://www.open.edu/.../the-financial.../content-section-3
Spence, Signaling, 2002
I will read in class very little of this long paper -- from page 436 right hand side column to page 438 the end of the left hand side column. So, here we will discuss the simple algebraic models, at least the first two.
Akerlof, THE MARKET FOR LEMONS, 1970
I will read in class the highlighted paragraphs and will skip the algebraic model, as I prefer the modelling of the Spence paper
