| This thesis, like greater Gaul, is divided into three parts. Each of the three papers within deals with improving the efficiency of allocating resources within an economic system to those who value them most highly, whether these resources be goods for consumption, goods for resale, monetary payments, information, or a good reputation.; The first part, entitled "A New Role for Middlemen: Centralizing Reputation in Repeated Exchange" uses the theory of repeated games to argue for the economic merit of two classes of intermediaries: the "sledgehammer intermediary" who escrows goods and payments and provides assurances of exchange completion, and the "reputation-concentrating intermediary" who processes messages about exchange performance and disseminates reputational updates to deter cheating.; The second part, entitled "Towards a Set of Information-Economy Management Principles," describes a process for formalizing the construction of rules of thumb used to structure business organizations to maximize the usefulness of information flowing through them. It encapsulates the theory underlying the book Creative Destruction: A Six-Stage Process for Transforming the Organization by Richard L. Nolan and David C. Croson (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995).; The third part, entitled "Rivalry or Partnership? Efficient Pricing and Incentives for Cost Improvement in a Three-tier Channel" describes a system of multipart tariffs and to implement profit-maximizing pricing among independent vertically-linked channel members. The novelty lies in repeating the two-part tariff game to capture pricing efficiency even when the fixed payments in the two-part tariff are not fully contractible. |
