SI652 / EECS 547 Electronic Commerce
Rahul Sami
WINTER 2012 TuTh 1:00-2:30pm
Classroom: 2185 North Quad
Office hours: Monday 4-5pm; Tuesday 3-4pm
Overview:
The Internet is rapidly changing the way we trade with one another,
conduct businesses, and organize financial institutions. In this course,
we will cover a range of important principles -- drawn from computer science,
economics, and other disciplines -- that influence the design and analysis
of Internet commerce systems.
We will begin with an introduction to design and analysis methods to make e-Commerce systems robust against failures, malicious attackers, and strategic manipulation. We will then study three aspects of electronic commerce systems:
locating buyers and sellers (search), setting terms of trade
(negotiation), and verifying and consummating the deal (exchange).
The goal is to develop a mastery of the
fundamental concepts and approaches through examples, rather than
an exhaustive survey of the field. The course is a semester-long, 3-credit course.
Course Learning Objectives:
After completing this course, students should be able to:
- Identify the major steps of commerce, and explain how emerging
e-commerce facilities and services support these steps.
- Describe distributed information services in terms of protocols, and
demonstrate familiarity with central networking and cryptographic protocols
employed in electronic commerce.
- Employ game-theoretic solution concepts in the evaluation of simple game
descriptions, and apply game-theoretic principles to pivotal strategic
issues arising in commerce scenarios.
- Explain how a search engine works
- Describe the basic categories of auction, characterize their strategic
issues or solutions, and relate these to existing online auction mechanisms.
- Enumerate payment instruments in common use, and explain their basic
operation. Describe proposed and existing digital payment mechanisms in
relation to these instruments, and list their advantageous properties and
drawbacks.
- Define "network externality", and explain how the issue of network
externalities influences the adoption and dissemination of commerce
technology. Also suggest how to set pricing policies to increase long-term
revenues in systems with network externalities.
Prerequisites
SI502 (taken concurrently is fine), EECS281, or permission of instructor.
Course Schedule
Note: This schedule might change slightly over the course of the semester
- Lecture 1: Introduction
- Lecture 2: Distributed Infrastructure and Transactions
- Lecture 3: Information Security
- Lecture 4: Cryptographic Protocols
- Lecture 5: Introduction to Incentives and Game Theory
- Lecture 6: Game Theory 2: Extensive-form Games
- Lecture 7: Game Theory 3: Incomplete Information
- Lecture 8: Discovery and Search
- Lecture 9: Shopping and Price Comparison
- Lecture 10: Recommender and Reputation Systems
- Lecture 11: Marketing and Advertising
- Lecture 12: Privacy
- Lecture 13: Trading Agent Contest: Overview
- Lecture 14: First In-Class Exam
- Lecture 15: Mechanism Design
- Lecture 16: Negotiation and Auctions
- Lecture 17: Auction Mechanisms
- Lecture 18: Sponsored Search Auctions
- Lecture 19: Interdependent auctions
- Lecture 20: Package-Bid Auctions
- Lecture 21: Procurement Auctions
- Lecture 22: Pricing and Price Discrimination
- Lecture 23: Payment and Exchange
- Lecture 24: PayPal; Micropayments; Mobile payments
- Lecture 25: Electronic Cash
- Lecture 26: Digital Rights Management
- Lecture 27: Trading Agents Presentations
- Lecture 28: Second In-Class Exam
Academic Integrity Policy
The UM and SI Academic Integrity Policy applies to this course:
Collaboration while working on homework
problems, and while discussing and interpreting the reading assignments, is
encouraged. Active
learning is effective. Collaboration will be especially valuable in summarizing the
reading materials and picking out the key concepts. You must, however, write your
homework submission on your own, in your own words, before turning it in. If you
worked with someone on the homework before writing it, you must list any and all
collaborators on your written submission.
All written submissions must be your own, original work. Original
work for narrative questions is not mere paraphrasing of someone else's completed
answer: you must not share written answers with each other at all. At most, you
should be working from notes you took while participating in a study session. Largelyduplicate copies of the same assignment will receive an equal division of the total
point score from the one piece of work.
You may incorporate selected excerpts from publications by other authors, but
they must be clearly marked as quotations and must be attributed. If you build
on the ideas of prior authors, you must cite their work. You may obtain copy
editing assistance, and you may discuss your ideas with others, but all substantive writing and ideas must be your own, or be explicitly attributed to another.
See the
Rackham Graduate policy on Academic and Professional Integrity
for the definition of plagiarism, and associated consequences.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
If you think you need an accommodation for a disability, please let me
know at your earliest convenience. Some aspects of this course, the assignments, the in-class activities, and the way we teach may be modified
to facilitate your participation and progress. As soon as you make me
aware of your needs, we can work with the Office of Services for Students
with Disabilities (SSD) to help us determine appropriate accommodations. SSD (734-763-3000; http://www.umich.edu/~sswd) typically rec-
ommends accommodations through a Verified Individualized Services and
Accommodations (VISA) form. I will treat any information you provide
as private and confidential.
Course Work and Assessment
- Grading will be based on the following components:
- Problem Sets (4-5): 25%
- HDIW presentations: 15%
- Trading Agents/Ad Auction Project: 15%
- First In-Class Exam: 20%
- Second In-Class Exam: 20%
- Participation: 5%
- Problem sets are due by the date and time specified.
20% will be deducted for problem sets up to 1 day late, and
40% will be deducted for problem sets upto 2 days late.
After 2 days, the problem set will not be graded.
- Problem sets are to solved individually. However, you may discuss the
problem set questions with others, under the following conditions:
- You first attempt to work out solutions to the questions on your
own, as best you can. The main goal of the problem set is to get you to think about the ideas covered in class.
- You may then discuss the topics and concepts involved, your
interpretation of the questions, and any particularly interesting/subtle/sneaky concept or idea you came across while solving the problems. You are not
allowed to directly discuss the solutions to the questions.
- You write-up your solutions on your own.
- In your solution, acknowledge who you have had discussions with.