About

Marshall Van Alstyne is the Allen & Kelli Questrom Chair of Information Systems at Boston University, where he studies the economics of information. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Yale and MS and PhD degrees in management and economics of information from MIT. His research has covered topics such as platform business models, antitrust, the structure of the firm, data governance, the pricing of information, and how information drives productivity in social networks. His current focus is on misinformation, data rights, and free speech, exploring how to reduce the flow of fake news while increasing freedom of expression through principles of market design, aiming to show that misinformation can be mitigated without central authority.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business

Selected publications

• Platform Regulation: Abuses, Diagnoses & Solutions

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Digital platforms 2.0: Emerging topics, opportunities, and challenges

  International Journal of Research in Marketing · 2026-03-01

  articleOpen access

  Digital platforms increasingly influence most online markets and ecosystems, creating substantial value for their customers, owners, and other partners. Yet, the challenges associated with platform operations, governance, and regulation continue to evolve. This paper aims to help researchers understand the extensive platform literature to facilitate effective academic contributions. First, we lay out emerging research topics and open questions related to platforms, both from an internal (platform design) and external (platform regulation) perspective. Then, we compare techniques for acquiring and using platform data, both with and without the collaboration of the platforms themselves, to facilitate empirical platform research. Our insights highlight the importance of multidisciplinary and multi-method approaches in studying digital platform policies, value chains and regulation.

  PublisherDOI

• Market Design Interventions for Safer Agentic AI

  Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2025-12-14

  articleSenior author

  Our research investigates safety considerations necessary to govern the deployment of Generative AI agents on e-commerce platforms against abuse by fraudulent sellers. Fraudulent advertisements that overpromise product quality lead to the purchase of subpar goods while platforms lack effective recourse mechanisms for consumers. Online reputation systems such as buyer-provided ratings for sellers attempt to provide a mechanism for verified buyers of a product to register their feedback in a structured way that may inform the future purchase of goods. However reviews and reputation are often gamed using bots and fake accounts, constituting “black hat” seller practices. We design an experiment (n = 250 human participants, ~5000 rounds of advertised product sales) in order to demonstrate the occurrence of agentic deception in a two-sided e-commerce marketplace and show how a novel economic intervention involving staked claims limits deceptive strategies to promote honesty in the marketplace.

  Publisher

• Platform Transformation Risk and the Role of Hosting Rivals

  Production and Operations Management · 2025-12-02

  articleSenior author

  Under what conditions should traditional firms transform into digital platforms? While adding developers can enhance value through externalizing value creation, it also entails investment risk. We show that when transformation entails high risk and the value of network effects is low, firms should avoid transforming into a platform and retain their traditional form. By contrast, low transformation risk or high value of network effects make digital transformation profitable. Interestingly, when firms choose to transform, we show that inviting rivals onto the platform can raise profits. Indeed, the platform can even pay rivals to join its platform in certain cases. We find that the benefit of enhancing network effects through demand aggregation can be more profitable than competing as separate platforms. Further, inviting rivals onto a proprietary platform lowers the rival’s competitive aggressiveness. This is a novel strategic rationale for inviting rivals onto the platform elicited in this article. Yet, when the value of network effects is very high and investments are nearly certain, the platform chooses to foreclose rivals’ participation. We offer guidelines for managers seeking to transform and for regulators seeking to intervene to boost market efficiency. We use real-world examples to illustrate our theory.

  PublisherDOI

• Platform Regulation: Beyond Power and Size

  Academy of Management Perspectives · 2025-12-18

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Innovation and Regulation of Emerging Technologies from a Global Perspective

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  This symposium explores global challenges of innovation and regulation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies. As a scholarly and global community, we need to focus on how innovation and regulatory approaches influence, and are influenced by, advancements in AI. The differential speeds in innovation, available venture capital and regulatory guardrails create potential for both competition and collaboration. Scholars from regions including the EU, US, China, and other parts of the world will share diverse perspectives, addressing opportunities and challenges in fostering innovation while navigating regulatory complexities. The session brings together researchers whose work bridges academic theory and practical insights. Its goal is to advance theoretical understanding and provide actionable ideas and research opportunities for academics and practitioners in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

  PublisherDOI

• Where Will the Next Wave of Multi-Sided Platform Companies Emerge?

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Multi-sided platform marketplaces connect at least two groups of customers together, enabling complex value creation and capture systems. Over the last decade, they have dominated entire industries, attracting billions of users and dollars of capital. Interestingly, most of the world’s most successful platforms (based on market capitalization) were founded primarily in North America and secondarily in Asia, with only a few founded in Europe and almost none elsewhere. Moreover, business-to-consumer platforms have grown faster than business-to-business platforms. And platforms have had more success per capita in cities than rural locations. This symposium assembles some of the world’s platform experts to describe their explanations and predictions for the locations, industries, and business models that will fuel the next wave of successful platforms. The session will conclude with a discussion among the panelists and audience for a research agenda to guide future efforts in this evolving field.

  PublisherDOI

• As Answers Get Cheaper, Questions Grow Dearer

  Communications of the ACM · 2025-12-10

  articleSenior author

  Abundant machine answers imply power shifts to better human questions.

  PublisherDOI

• Driving Open Innovation Through Open Platforms

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-02-22 · 13 citations

  book-chapter

  Abstract Open platforms provide an important avenue for firms to engage with external developers using open innovation strategies to create and commercialize their new innovations. Firms have successfully enabled external innovation by “inverting the firm” through permissionless innovation, often through APIs. By providing predictable rules, third parties can and will create their own innovations that increase the value of the overall platform. However, a key dilemma is how much openness will bring the best results for the platform and its owner. Openness can also create competition, dissipate value, and risk platform forking. This chapter summarizes two decades of research documenting the decisions made in opening platforms, discussing how it aligns with broader themes in open innovation and how firms can avoid being too open or too closed in their platform design.

  PublisherDOI

• Free Speech vs. Free Ride: Navigating the Supreme Court’s Social Media Paradox

  Communications of the ACM · 2024-10-17 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Regulating platforms.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• SaTC: Small: Core: Using Markets to Address Manipulated Information Online

  NSF · $672k · 2022–2025

• I-Corps: Knowledge Markets

  NSF · $50k · 2012–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Geoffrey Parker

  Dartmouth College

  140 shared

• Erik Brynjolfsson

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  66 shared

• Georgios Petropoulos

  65 shared

• Sinan Aral

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  33 shared

• Thomas R. Eisenmann

  Kayser Automotive (Germany)

  31 shared

• Geoffrey Parker

  24 shared

• Bertin Martens

  20 shared

• Guillermo Lagarda

  Inter-American Development Bank

  18 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Management

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1984

• M.S., Management

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1979

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

  1975

Awards & honors

• Herb Simon Prize (2021)
• INFORMS Prize (2020)
• Thinkers 50 top management scholar (2019, 2021)