Background The Economics Branch of the Department of Trade and Commerce was the outgrowth of the Economics Branch of the Department of Reconstruction and Supply. The latter department had responsibility for the administration of the transition from World War II mobilization to a peacetime economy. Its minister was the legendary C.D. Howe. The magnitude of its task can be appreciated when it is ...

The field of economic mechanism design has been an active area of research in economics for at least 20 years. This field uses the tools of economics and game theory to design “rules of interaction” for economic transactions that will, in principle, yield some desired outcome. In this paper I provide an overview of this subject for an audience interested in applications to electronic commerce a...

One of the most common early forecasts for commerce in the information age was the removal of wholesalers, distributors, and other intermediaries in a firm’s value chain. This "disintermediation” offered the prospect of greater efficiency in supply and marketing channels. More recent evidence suggests that such forecasts were shortsighted, and today new “cybermediaries” have lodged themselves i...

The growth of E-commerce had suddenly changed the ground-rules for conducting business, linking the consumer directly to the producer. The digitization of content also meant faster and easier transmission of information from one point to another in a network, thus reducing the need for an intermediary. It was assumed that intermediaries would disappear resulting in frictionless commerce. This p...

This article reviews developments in the growing body of research on electronic commerce from the perspective of economic analysis. Our goals are fourfold. First, we construct a new framework for understanding electronic commerce research. Second, we identify the range of applicable theory and current research in the context of the new conceptual model. Third, we offer an assessment of the stat...

This article reviews the growing body of research on electronic commerce from the perspective of economic analysis. It begins by constructing a new framework for understanding electronic commerce research, then identifies the range of applicable theory and current research in the context of the new conceptual model. It goes on to assess the state-of-the-art of knowledge about electronic commerc...

The increasing concerns of clients, particularly in online commerce, plus the impact of legislations on information security have compelled companies to put more resources in information security. As a result, senior managers in many organizations are now expressing a much greater interest in information security. However, the largest body of research related to preventing breaches is technical...