Events - 2009

Dec 11, 2009 - 3:00-5:00pm
Grand Ballroom,
The Leela, Bangalore.

Mythbusting in the Online World

John Morgan, Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research.

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Abstract

The business and economics world are full of common wisdom about how competition should work in online markets. Based on over a decade of research, the topic examines how this common wisdom measures up to reality and bust some of the .myths. of online competition. The myths are:

1) Given a head start, even an inferior platform can prevail online.
2) The law of one price is a geed description of most online markets given the ease with which consumers can compare prices.
3) The format of online auctions hardly matters since all forms are revenue equivalent.
4) Unequal size platforms can coexist indefinitely even when there are network effects
John Morgan joined Yahoo! Research in 2008 as a Principal Research Scientist. His research interests include auctions, platform competition, mechanism design, and strategy. Prior to coming to Yahoo, he was the Gary and Sherron Kalbach Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He founded Berkeley's Xlab---a 40 subject laboratory for experiments in the Social Sciences. He created the MBA elective Game Theory, the most popular elective in the Berkeley MBA curriculum. Before coming to Berkeley, he was a professor in the Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy at Princeton, where he also founded an experimental lab. His research has been featured in top academic journals as well as in mainstream media outlets including the Wall Street Journal.