OPIM 403 MIS Seminar  Empirical Information Systems Economics Fall 2004

This seminar will cover state of the art research in empirical information systems economics. It will expose you to the most recent research, tools and methodologies that rely on observing web based micro-level data to answer interesting economics questions. Topics will range from estimating welfare measures of electronic markets, visualizing and curve clustering online auction data, examining determinants of online price dispersion, comparative analysis of  friction in competing online market mechanisms, to name a few. There will be a heavy hands on component that emphasizes web based data collection. Initial training will be provided in PHP, mySQL and Apache to facilitate systematic real time longitudinal data capture from the web. In the first half of the course, you will be required to replicate existing studies. The insights gained from such an exercise will be subsequently applied to identify new and interesting research questions and answering them. The latter will involve selecting appropriate models and estimating parameters of interest from real-world data. 

You will be assigned an A in the course, if you can deliver a close to a journal quality research product by the end of the semester. Other basis for grading (with a maximum achievable grade of A-) will be a mixture of class participation, your tackling of the technological problem sets, and your presentation of research papers. Success in the course will hinge critically on your ability to demonstrate creative and original thinking and on the "quality" of your class participation. 

Links to Useful (Grad Student) Resources

Schedule of Topics (Tentative)

An Empirical Analysis of Network Externalities in Peer-To-Peer Music-Sharing Networks 

(by Atip Asvanund, Karen Clay, Ramayya Krishnan, Michael D. Smith)

Rohit (Matt)