University of Oxford

Graduate Student, Oxford Internet Institute

DPhil candidate (read PhD)

St Antony's College, University of Oxford

Thesis Title: Economic Analysis of Interactions in Cyberspace: From eReputation to eTrust

About

Florian is currently reading for a DPhil (read PhD) at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, with the generous support of a Scatcherd European scholarship and an Economic and Social Research Council studentship.

[Complete biography: florianbersier.com]

RESEARCH

The invention of the Web and especially the development of the WWW ≥ 2.0 helped democratize the idea that something existed beyond the standard homo-economicus[1] model. Indeed, online interactions feature predominant idiosyncrasies (e.g. 1-shot type, asynchronous, geographically dispersed, anonymous ...) that represent a perfect fertilizer to maintain a large "garden" full of Akerlof's Lemons[2], leading naturally to economies in which only low quality interactions are possible and discouraging then trade between rational economic agents. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that the volume of electronic interactions is growing everyday, thus suggesting the existence of mechanisms able to decrease the natural information asymmetry of digital environments and encourage trade and exchanges on the Internet.

One of the most important and well-known mechanism in play is reputation. Nowadays, we decide to buy or download an item online mainly because we have a belief that this item will correspond to our expectations. For instance, we choose to install an application on our Android phone or tablet because it has good reviews, we choose to bid on an item in eBay because the seller has a good feedbacks score and so on and so forth. While the mechanisms for accumulating reputation are principally informal in offline settings, such mechanisms become structured online, making then possible their study and analysis. This appealing and interesting change gave birth to a large and growing literature about (online) reputation in the last decade or so. One can mention the works by Bolton, Cabral, Dellarocas, Fehr, Heski Bar-Isaac, Ockenfels and Resnick, among others.

When the existing literature has principally focused on the ex-post effects of reputation for online interactions occurring in 2-sided reputation systems[3], my research adopts an ex-ante approach and focuses on the mechanisms and determinants necessary to the very formation of reputation within electronic economies, featuring either 1-sided or 2-sided reputation-systems[4]. Put differently, I am interested in investigating and modelling what motivates an economic agent to leave a digital footprint (read a rating/feedback/review) after an interaction - and to contribute so in a kind of public good, taking into account the observed quality of the interaction, the type of good exchanged (free/non-free, rival/non-rival), the size of the economy, the type of reputation system (1-sided vs 2-sided), the cost to enter the reputation system and the cost to leave a footprint (star-rating, text review).

My research is mainly based on insights from Information Economics, Behavioural Economics, Game Theory, Experimental Economics and considers agents with bounded rationality featuring altruistic and reciprocal behaviours. Besides its academic focus, I hope that my work will help design more context-aware reputation systems and build more (social) efficient electronic economies.
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[1] Homo economicus or economic man is a rational and selfish economic agent who only seeks to maximize his/her own utility.

[2] Of course, this is a wordplay. The Market for Lemons explained on Wikipedia.

[3] e.g. impact of a seller’s reputation on auction prices, development of cooperation and trust within 2-sided online economies

[4] 2-sided reputation system: both the buyer and the seller can rate/evaluate each other (eBay), implying possible strategic behaviours | 1-sided reputation system: only the buyer can rate/evaluate the seller.

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