Market Engineering: Insights from Two Decades of Research on Markets and Information

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world.

Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals’ and organizations’ behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today’s society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society’s goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management.

With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship.

Henner Gimpel holds the chair for Digital Management at the University of Hohenheim and is affiliated with the University of Augsburg and Fraunhofer FIT. His research interests include the analysis and design of digital markets and human-centered, behavioral information systems.

Jan Krämer is Full Professor in Information Systems at the University of Passau, Germany, where he holds the chair of Internet and Telecommunications Business. His research focuses on the regulation of telecommunications and internet markets, as well as digital platform ecosystems and data-driven business models.

Dirk Neumann is Full Professor with the Chair of Information Systems of the University of Freiburg, Germany. His research topics include Business Analytics, Text Mining and Machine Learning.

Jella Pfeiffer is Professor for Digitalization, E-Business and Operations Management at Giessen University. Her research interests include decision making and decision support in e-commerce and virtual-reality-commerce, and digital platforms in general, by applying experimental research and data science approaches.

Stefan Seifert is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the University of Bayreuth. His research centers around auctions with a focus on applications in procurement, licensing, and renewable energy markets.

Timm Teubner is Assistant Professor of Trust in Digital Services at the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) and TU Berlin. The main focus of his work are digital platforms, including trust and reputation systems, human-computer interaction, and crowdsourcing.

Daniel J. Veit is Full Professor in Business Administration and Information Systems at the University of Augsburg, Germany. His research focuses on transformational effects of information systems and digitalization on individuals, organizations and society with a specific emphasis on sustainability.

Anke Weidlich is Professor for Control and Integration of Grids at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research focuses on electricity markets, power grids and energy system analysis, with a special emphasis on sustainability perspectives.