Marshall Van Alstyne
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Marshall Van Alstyne (born Columbus, Ohio) is a professor at Boston University and researcher at MIT. His work focuses on the economics of information.
Van Alstyne grew up in North Carolina before earning a B.A in computer science from Yale University, and M.S. and Ph.D. in information systems from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He has made substantial contributions to understanding information markets. With graduate students Thede Loder and Rick Wash, he was the first to prove [1] that applying a signaling and screening mechanism to email spam can, in theory, create more value for consumers than a perfect filter (see also "attention economics"). With professor Geoffrey Parker, he contributed to the founding literature on "two-sided networks," a refinement of network effects that explains how firms can profitably price information at zero [2]. Subsidized pricing and two-sided network effects can cause markets to concentrate in the hands of a few firms. These properties inform both firms’ strategies and antitrust law.
His research has been honored with several best paper awards, a National Science Foundation career award, and appeared in such journals as Science, Management_Science, and Harvard Business Review.
[edit] References
- T. Loder, M. Van Alstyne, and R. Wash (2004). ``Information Asymmetry and Thwarting Spam Social Science Research Network
- T. Loder, M. Van Alstyne, and R. Wash (2006). ``An Economic Response to Unsolicited Communication Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy
- Geoffrey P. and M. Van Alstyne (2000) Information Complements, Substitutes, and Strategic Product Design
- Geoffrey P. and M. Van Alstyne (2005). ``Two-Sided Network Effects: A Theory of Information Product Design. Management Science, Vol. 51, No. 10.
- T. Eisenmann, G. Parker, and M. Van Alstyne (2006). ``Strategies for Two-Sided Markets.” Harvard Business Review.
