The Economics of Internet Search |
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DESCRIPTION/ABSTRACT: The last seminar in this year's Calit2-sponsored series, "Behavioral, Social, and Computer Sciences Seminar Series," is Friday, May 23, 2008. This series promotes the development of theory and experiments that apply the computational world view to the theories and methodologies of the social and behavioral sciences. This lecture provides an introduction to the economics of Internet search engines. After a brief review of the historical development of the technology and the industry, I describe some of the economic features of the auction system used for displaying ads. It turns out that some relatively simple economic models provide significant insight into the operation of these auctions. In particular, the classical theory of two-sided matching markets turns out to be very useful in this context. SPEAKER BIO: Hal R. Varian, Chief Economist at Google, started in May 2002 as a consultant and has been involved in many aspects of the company, including auction design, econometric, finance, corporate strategy and public policy. He also holds academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley in the business, economics, and information management departments. Dr. Varian is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was Co-Editor of the American Economic Review from 1987-1990 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is the author of two major economics textbooks which have been translated into 22 languages. He is the co-author of a bestselling book on business strategy, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and wrote a monthly column for the New York Times from 2000 to 2007. He received his BS degree from MIT in 1969 and his MA in mathematics and Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1973. He has also taught at MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan and other universities around the world. MORE INFORMATION: Refreshments served after talk. |
