Whinston, Andrew B.2011-05-092011-05-092002-05http://hdl.handle.net/2152/11144textElectronic commerce has made its entry into the main stream of market economy. It is estimated that by 2005, the revenue from electric commerce will reach 1,000 billion dollars. Despite its success, there are still many questions. This research addresses three of them. The first chapter introduces a Transparent Safe fund-item exchange mechanism, which would assist buyers and sellers in online auctions in the exchange of funds and items through cryptology protocols. The Safe is also incentive compatible; that is, the best strategy for both the buyer and the seller is to behave in an honest manner, and follow the protocol to complete the transaction. The second chapter presents a user identification and verification process in online auction. This research was the first to identify a fundamental problem --- the poorly designed user authentication process currently in use today. This had serious implications that affect many aspects of the online auction operations, such as user registration, auction mechanisms, reputation rating and fraud prevention. Then, the research introduces an i-Ticket Booth authentication protocol that could add two levels of protection and provide the users with a trustworthy trading environment through stronger identification and authentication function. Chapter three addresses the question of how to price the digital products and services in electronic commerce. We have proposed a “singing lottery ticket” incentive mechanism that might be combined with a subscription pricing scheme. Used together, we hope to give the user the motivation to pay a small subscription fee for the digital products or services.electronicengCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.Electronic commerce--Security measuresBusiness networks--Computer networks--Security measuresRestricted