Faculty and Research

Ben is a member of the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at the Harvard Business School. His research focuses on market design, particularly as to electronic markets.

Much of Ben's recent work considers Internet advertising. He compared the revenue of alternative structures of pay-per-click advertising auctions, quantifying the losses from early inefficient auction systems. He has also analyzed the stability and truth-telling properties of certain online advertising mechanisms, and he designed a simulated bidding environment to evaluate bidding strategies empirically.

Ben has examined issues of advertising fraud, particularly in the area of spyware. He has chronicled the methods by which spyware becomes installed on users' computers, and he has tracked spyware programs' revenue sources. His recent work shows how spyware interferes with measuring web site traffic, and how even well-intending companies end up advertising through spyware.

Ben's consulting practice focuses on preventing and detecting online fraud (especially advertising fraud). Representative clients include the ACLU, AOL, the City of Los Angeles, Microsoft, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Football League, the New York Times, Universal Music Group, the Washington Post, and Wells Fargo.

Ben holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Economics at Harvard University, a J.D. from the Harvard Law School, an A.M. in Statistics from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College (summa cum laude). He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar.

With Peter Coles, Ben teaches an MBA elective course entitled Managing Networked Businesses, emphasizing management challenges in markets with network effects.  Ben, Peter Coles, and Al Roth jointly convene a periodic Market Design Workshop.  Ben teaches in HBS executive education programs Delivering Information Systems and Taking Marketing Digital.