Using Electronic Markets to Achieve Efficient Task Distribution

Abstract: The Internet was built using the efforts of a worldwide team of programmers that coordinated and competed through laissez-faire methods. Much of the effort was freely provided, or paid for by entities in a process that did not conform to normal commercial revenue-seeking or government regulatory behaviour. This points to major inefficiencies in the market for software. One inhibitor is the large search costs undertaken by managers to acquire new programmers.