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Colloquia

Competition in Mediated-Search based Markets

Dr. David Sarne
Bar-Ilan University

March 23rd, 2010
Sage 3303, 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Refreshments at 3:30 p.m.

Abstract:

The talk considers future electronic markets, where price comparison is facilitated by self-interested comparison shopping agents. The comparative search conducted by the agents is driven by incentives offered by sellers, the cost incurred by the search, and competition dynamics that arise in the multi-agent setting. Based on models of economic search theory (and in particular "Pandora's problem", a formal analysis of the strategies used by the agents and the corresponding expected buyers' expense and sellers' net revenue are introduced. Equilibrium analysis is given for homogeneous environments in which all agents share the same search characteristics. Using this latter environment, it is demonstrated how the transition to competitive comparison-shopping mediated market can in some cases result both with lower expected expense to buyers and higher expected net revenue to sellers.

Bio:

David Sarne is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Bar-Ilan University. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering and M.Sc. degree in Information Systems both from Tel-Aviv University and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University. He was a Postdoctoral Associate in SEAS at Harvard University.

Last updated: March 9, 2010