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INFO290: Information Technology Economics, Strategy, and Policy

Fall 2011



Readings

Many of the assigned readings are licensed by the UC Berkeley Library, and can be accessed from a computer with a campus IP address. You can also access these materials from off-campus by using the library's proxy server.

Reading assignments may be adjusted throughout the course of the semester.

1. Economics of information goods, services, and platforms

Required:

Optional:
  • Luenberger, D., Markets, Chapter 7 of Information Science, Princeton University Press, 2006. [Intro/refresher of basic microeconomics concepts]
  • John Perry Barlow, The Economy of Ideas, Wired 2.03, 1994. [Visionary of his time.]
  • Sundararajan, A. Network Effects, part of the Industrial Organization of Information Technology Industries web site.
  • Varian, H., Section 6 "Switching costs and lock-in" in Economics of Information Technology. Mattioli Lecture at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, 2001.

2.1 Business strategy: differential pricing

Required:

Optional:


2.2 Business strategy: versioning, bundling

Required:

Optional:


2.3 Business strategy: pricing at zero, price conditioning

Required:

Optional:


2.4 Business strategy: competition

Readings:

Optional:

  • McAfee, P., Introduction to Economic Analysis. Section 7.2 on "Cournot Oligopoly".
  • Tirole, J. The Theory of Industrial Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, Chapter 5 "Short-Run Price Competition", pp. 133-152. ISBN: 9780262200714.


2.5 Business strategy: complements

Required:


2.6 Business strategy: platforms and two-sided markets

Required:

Optional:



3.1 Industry structure: loci of competition, market power

Required:

Optional:


3.2 Industry structure: vertical control, network neutrality

Required:

Optional:



4. Economics of information: value of information, information asymmetry

Required:

Optional:



5. Power law, long tail, search, and recommendation

Required:

Optional:



6. Network cascades and viral marketing

Required:

Optional:


7. Network formation and network structure

Required:

  • Jackson, Matthew O. "network formation." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Optional:



8. Peer production, crowdsourcing, human computation: incentives, coordination

Required:

Optional:



9. Interdependency and information security

Required:

Optional: