Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces
Management Science - Special issue: Frontier research on information systems and economics
Dynamics of an Information-Filtering Economy
CIA '98 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents II, Learning, Mobility and Electronic Commerce for Information Discovery on the Internet
Information and interaction in marketspace: towards an open agent-based market infrastructure
WOEC'96 Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Proceedings of the Second USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce - Volume 2
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Shopbots are agents that search the Internet for information pertaining to the price and quality of goods or services. With the advent of shopbots, a dramatic reduction in search costs is imminent, which promises (or threatens) to radically alter market behavior. This research includes the proposal and theoretical analysis of a simple economic model which is intended to capture some of the essence of shopbots, and attempts to shed light on their potential impact on markets. Moreover, experimental simulations of an economy of software agents are described, which are designed to model the dynamic interaction of electronic buyers, sellers, and shopbots. This study forms part of a larger research program that aims to provide new insights on the impact of agent and information technology on the nascent information economy.