Internet Economics

About

Are you concerned about the dominance of tech monopolies? Wondering how they ended up with everyone’s data? Not sure whether to trust a seller online? Think innovation should move faster, or that the Internet is full of publishers churning out spam content? Anxious about what AI will mean for competition? Me too—let’s talk about fixing it!

Internet Economics is a course in economics for people who want to combine a rigorous understanding of digital markets with a focus on good policy making. Students will learn how to diagnose when and why digital markets don’t work very well (which turns out to be quite often!) Just as importantly, they will learn about a range of economically-informed policy or business interventions that people use to address these problems.

Here’s our three-step plan:

(1) methodology: learn how economists use models to understand how markets work.

(2) theory: use those tools to rigorously determine exactly which parts of a digital market’s mechanism are prone to failure.

(3) practice: identify interventions to adjust the mechanism so that it works better.

This course will expose students to a wide range of ideas in economics that are useful for understanding the fundamental mechanics of how markets work, and will develop the skills to apply those tools and to access the large literature on digital economics.

No prior experience in economics is necessary. An optional series of short video lectures and exercises will be provided in advance to cover the mathematical tools needed to follow the course.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course students will have:

• have obtained an understanding of important concepts and methodological approaches in economics.
• know how economic analysis can be applied to help understand interaction and exchange in technology markets.
• understand sources of market failure and the ways policymakers and business strategists respond to them.
• be able to formulate research questions that are amenable to economic analysis and provide answers to them.
• be familiar with important research on the economics of technology.