Time: 4.4 12:00-14:00
Location:A949
Title：The Economics of Online Platforms
Presenter:Alexander White
Abstract：
Following the Internet's widespread adoption, much economic work has studied ‘online platforms’: firms that mainly interact with consumers in cyberspace. This article surveys such work, focusing on the ways in which traditional economic models have been adapted to incorporate novel aspects made relevant by the Internet. This literature can be divided roughly into two categories: broadbrush study of the competition between platforms and more fine-grained study of the ways in which users and platforms interact with one another. The former focuses on extending oligopoly theory to include ‘consumption externalities’; the latter extends auction and search theory to a world of precisely measureable actions.
Introduction：
Alexander White is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. He received his B.A., in Economics, from the College at Columbia University in 2005 and his Ph.D., in the same field, from the Toulouse School of Economics in 2011. His research is primarily in Industrial Organization and Microeconomic Theory, with particular focus on the economics of the Internet.
