Laboratory Experiments with Reputation Mechanisms For...

Google Tech Talks August 22, 2007 ABSTRACT Reputation mechanisms facilitate economic transactions with asymmetric information, such as buying a used car, using eBay or relying on web page links. In contrast to expensive legal proceedings to enforce contracts, reputation encourages voluntary cooperation by exposing past behavior to potential business partners. Designing reputation mechanisms must balance economic effectiveness against privacy intrusiveness and the cost to collect and verify information of past transactions. This talk will discuss laboratory experiments evaluating this design trade-off in a double-auction market where people can choose not to fulfill their contracts. The results...