Call for Papers—Special Issue of Information Systems Research—Market Design and Analytics

Idea in Brief

The digital economy allows for traditional markets to happen virtually (for example, through eBay) and for new market platforms to take hold where no formal system had previously existed, for example, via Uber, Airbnb, or Match.com. Other successful market design applications include stable-matching mechanisms for school choice, spectrum auction design, the design of flower markets, electricity markets, dating markets, and digital advertising markets. Despite much visible success, frictions related to information asymmetry, trust, and lack of understanding of the quantification and distribution of overall welfare generated by such markets persist. Further, a wave of technological innovation in the form of machine learning, block-chain, AI, and IoT-enabled smart-product ecosystems stands to disrupt our traditional thinking around market formation and efficiency.

Information Systems research has already made numerous contributions to market design including the analysis of bid languages, payment rules, allocation problems, design of reputation systems, as well as the empirical analysis of bidder behavior and consumer surplus in online auctions. At the same time it is an important growth area for IS research, leveraging the strength of the community in designing and analyzing complex information systems and their use in organizations and society. The design of markets is challenging as it needs to consider strategic behavior of market participants, psychological and cognitive factors, and computational problems in order to implement the objectives of a designer.

We seek papers that study the design, operation, economics, behavioral aspects, and impact of innovative market designs and new types of marketplaces. We are open to papers that utilize a variety of methodologies, including analytical, empirical, field experiments, and behavioral approaches. We are especially interested in papers that are clearly motivated and informed by industry challenges and practices of the digital economy. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Role of market design toward addressing global grand challenges of education, healthcare, environment, and income inequality

• Analysis of allocative efficiency of existing digital markets and sharing economy platforms

• Next generation trust and reputation mechanisms that reduce market frictions

• Algorithmic advances toward stable matching in emerging digital markets and sharing economy platforms

• Computational optimization in market design

• Iterative multi-object auction mechanisms and algorithmic models

• Matching with constraints and complex preferences

• Personalization and recommendations in matching markets

• Transparency, opacity, anonymity, information revelation, and fairness in next-gen digital markets

• Fairness-efficiency tradeoffs in emerging digital markets and sharing economy platforms

• Fully (autonomous) intelligent agent-based smart markets, their applications, and potential risks

• Labor markets for IT and analytics human capital and managing demand-supply imbalances

• Peer-to-peer and disintermediated markets based on block-chain technology

• Welfare impact and unintended consequences of digital markets and sharing economy platforms

• Market design that aids better brand-consumer interactions, personalized consumer journeys, and optimal omni-channel advertising

• Design of healthcare market platforms, health insurance marketplaces, and market mechanisms that induce wellness

• Smart pricing, dynamic pricing, and contracting in next-gen markets of energy, telecom, bandwidth, computing, and on-demand digital services

This special issue is co-sponsored by the INFORMS Section on Auctions and Market Design.

Projected Timeline

Table

Editorial Review Board

Saif Benjaafar, University of Minnesota (Industrial & Systems Engineering)

Soumya Sen, University of Minnesota (Information & Decision Sciences)

DJ Wu, Georgia Tech

Rajiv Garg, University of Texas, Austin

John Horton, New York University

Karthik Kannan, Purdue University

Pedro Ferreira, Carnegie Mellon University

Song Yao, University of Minnesota (Marketing)

Amit Mehra, University of Texas, Dallas

Bill Rand, North Carolina State University

Nachiketa Sahoo, Boston University

Xinxin Li, University of Connecticut

Panagiotis Adamapolus, Emory University

Rodrigo Belo, Erasmus University

Kevin Yili Hong, Arizona State University

Liangfei Qiu, University of Florida

Shachar Reichman, Tel Aviv University

Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Ben Lubin, Boston University

Sasa Pekec, Duke University

Thayer Morrill, North Carolina State University

Tuomas Sandholm, Carnegie Mellon University

Sven Seuken, University of Zurich

Oleg Baranov, University of Colorado

Process

• Authors must submit all manuscripts through Information System Research’s online submission system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/isr by January 10, 2020.

• The editorial team will screen all submitted manuscripts. Only manuscripts deemed to have a reasonable chance of acceptance in an accelerated review process will remain under consideration.

• Manuscripts that pass the initial screening will undergo no more than two rounds of review (i.e., one major revision). Manuscripts not accepted by the end of the second round will be rejected. The Guest Editors will make the final decisions based on the Associate Editor report and review feedback.

• Authors must adhere to a strict schedule for submission and revision of manuscripts.

• Authors may submit rejected papers as regular submissions to Information Systems Research only if the special issue rejection letter recommends such an action. The Guest Editors will recommend submission as a regular Information Systems Research article only in special circumstances, such as when a formally reviewed manuscript had a strong likelihood of acceptance but either was deemed to be a poor fit with the theme of the special issue or required revisions that, while perceived to be feasible, are unlikely to be accomplished within the special issue’s accelerated review schedule.

• Authors of papers that go past first round must commit to attending a review workshop in Munich in early summer of 2020.