Electronic Commerce

http://kogan.rutgers.edu/ec-phd

# 26:198:621:01 Index: 23158

A Ph.D. course offered in the spring of 2025

by the Department of Accounting and Information Systems
Rutgers Business School - Newark and New Brunswick
Rutgers University

Prof. Alexander Kogan
One Washington Park 924 (Newark), (973) 353-1064
kogan@rutgers.edu

Location:

Day:

Time:

Newark Campus; 1WP-464

Wednesday

1:00 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.

Overview: This course is a research seminar that discusses technological, conceptual and methodological aspects of electronic commerce and applications of artificial intelligence. The course format combines lectures, seminar presentations and classroom discussions.

The course will utilize the Canvas online facilities, which can be found at:

Rutgers Canvas

For a student to gain access to our Canvas system, s/he must be enrolled and have a NETID. Once an enrolled student obtains a NETID, they will be added to the roster within 2 business days. Students should also check their email account in the Rutgers system and if it is not correct, they need to update their official student record. Students who do not have a NETID, can create one online using this link:

https://netid.rutgers.edu/

A student who is not familiar with Canvas can find introductory tutorial level information at:

Rutgers Getting Started In Canvas for Students

Online Course and Hardware Specifications:

In the Spring of 2025 this course will be conducted face-to-face. As a backup option, in parallel with the face-to-face meetings, this class will also take place on Zoom. These Zoom sessions CANNOT BE used instead of face-to-face participation in this class meetings, and are intended only as an emergency backup option. To take part in these Zoom mettings, students MUST use their Rutgers Zoom account with the name netid@rutgers.edu. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to participate using personal Zoom accounts. To be able to participate successfully in this course students should have access to a stable Internet connection and a computer with the hardware specifications equal or exceeding the items listed below to make sure that this computer can capably support MS Office Professional and virtual computing environments. Instructions for activating a Rutgers Zoom account can be found at:

https://it.rutgers.edu/zoom/knowledgebase/how-to-create-your-rutgers-zoom-account/

Note that the activation of the Rutgers Zoom account will involve browsing to netid.rutgers.edu and selecting Service Activation as explained in the link. Please also note that accounts with the correct name CAN be created in other ways, and students may have done this already - such accounts will work for some purposes but will not provide proper access to required service during the semesters - you must seek assistance in removing such accounts if they prevent your creating the required account through Service Activation at netid.rutgers.edu.

Instructions for signing into the activated Rutgers Zoom Account can be found at:

https://it.rutgers.edu/zoom/knowledgebase/how-do-i-log-into-my-zoom-account/

Regular attendance of class meetings is essential and will be monitored. Absence for reasons of religious obligation shall not be counted for purposes of reporting. Be prompt for class. Classes will begin on time. Late arrivals disrupt class discussions. Please turn your cell phones off during class. Please avoid private conversations with neighbors. Please do NOT engage in online chat or any other online activities during the class. Make sure that your behavior shows respect to the instructor and to your classmates.

The penalties for cheating are severe. There is a university wide policy on academic integrity, which we will follow. It is not worth the risk of suspension from the university to cheat.


Rutgers University Academic Integrity Policy

Please follow very carefully all the academic integrity guidlines you can find at:


Rutgers Business School Academic Integrity for Students

Generative AI Usage Policy:

Use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or BARD is only permitted to help you brainstorm ideas and see examples. All material you submit must be your own.

Bias Incident Reporting

Bias incidents: an act – either verbal, written, physical, or psychological that threatens or harms a person or group on the basis of actual or perceived race, religion, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, civil union status, domestic partnership status, atypical heredity or cellular blood trait, military service or veteran status. Bias incidents can be reported online at:


Rutgers University-Newark Incident Reporting Form

Coursework: The coursework includes presentations of research articles, in-class discussions, and a final course project researching one of the problems of electronic commerce. All after hours communications related to this course are expected to be conducted over the Internet.

Every student is required to study and briefly summarize in writing IN YOUR OWN WORDS (!) ALL required articles for every lecture, and submit these summaries as a single document before the beginning of each class. Every student will be assigned ONE of the required articles to prepare a class presentation of the article. Students will be given an option to express their preference for which of the three article they would like to present, but the final assignment can be modified by the instructor. A slide deck for the presentation should also be submitted before the beginning of each class. One of the students (chosen randomly during the class) has to present the article in class. All students have to participate in discussing the presented articles and be prepared to (possibly) replace the main discussant.

It is absolutely essential to start working on the course research project as soon as possible. Every student is required to prepare a three page long proposal for the course research project, and submit this proposal for instructor's evaluation by March 12, 2025. The course research project should be prepared in the form of a term paper, and presented during the last meeting of the class on April 30, 2025.

The final exam will be administered using Respondus Lockdown Browser and Monitor integrated into Canvas. The students are required to take a practice Lockdown Browser with Monitor Test Quiz by March 30, 2025.

Grading: The presentations of articles, the course project and the final exam will provide the basis for the course grade:

1%

Summaries of articles

2%

Slide decks for article presentations

45%

Article presentations

1%

Proposal for course project

1%

Slide deck for course project presentation

30%

Course project

20%

Final exam
The course is supported by the RAMS e-mailing list ec-phd-list. The list membership is automatically synchronized with the current class roster. Make sure that your current e-mail address is available in the Rutgers online directory. To post a message to the list, e-mail it to

ec-phd-list@rams.rutgers.edu

All the postings to this list are permanently archived and available from

https://rams.rutgers.edu/rams/list_edit.cgi?.State=View%20Archive&list_id=13778

Please note that your postings should be appropriate for this course.

This course does not have any required texbooks. Any appropriate textbooks, as well as online materials, can be used for studying the basics. I recommend the following readings.

Background Readings:

Office Hours:

The office hours for this course will take place online every Tuesday from 1 PM until 2 PM on Zoom. Please email the instructor in advance if you are planning to attend, and then email again right after you enter the Zoom meeting waiting room.

The List of Topics to Be Covered in This Course:

  1. 1/22/2025 Introduction to electronic commerce, telecommunications infrastructure, and Internet technology; client-server architecture of Internet applications, standard Internet services, HTTP
  2. 1/29/2025 Markup languages (HTML, XML, etc.), dynamic Web content, security and cryptography
  3. 2/5/2025 Internet Architecture and Pricing

    Assigned articles:

    1. Marjory S. Blumenthal and David D. Clark, "Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End-to-End Arguments vs. the Brave New World", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol. 1, No. 1, August 2001, Pages 70–109. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=383034.383037
    2. A. M. Odlyzko, "Internet pricing and the history of communications", Computer Networks, 36 (5-6) (2001), 493-517. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389128601001888. Also see http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications1b.pdf
    3. Scott Jordan, "Implications of Internet architecture on net neutrality", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2009, Pages 5.1-28. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1516539.1516540
  4. 2/12/2025 Electronic payment systems

    Assigned articles:

    1. Rainer Bohme, Nicolas Christin, Benjamin Edelman, Tyler Moore, "Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance", Journal of Economic Perspectives, VOL. 29, NO. 2, SPRING 2015, pp. 213-38. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.29.2.213/
    2. Eric B. Budish, "Trust at Scale: The Economic Limits of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Published online 16 October 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjae033
    3. Danton Bryans, "Bitcoin and Money Laundering: Mining for an Effective Solution", Indiana Law Journal, Volume 89, Issue 1, Winter 2014, pages 441 - 472. http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol89/iss1/13/.
  5. 2/19/2025 Trust and reputation in e-commerce and AI

    Assigned articles:

    1. Qinyuan Feng, Ling Liu, Yafei Dai, "Vulnerabilities and countermeasures in context-aware social rating services", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Volume 11, Issue 3, January 2012, pp. 11:1 - 11:27. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2078319
    2. Gayatri Swamynathan, Kevin C. Almeroth and Ben Y. Zhao, "The design of a reliable reputation system", Electronic Commerce Research, 10 (3-4) (2010), 239-270. http://www.springerlink.com/content/1389-5753/
    3. Siddharth Mehrotra, Chadha Degachi, Oleksandra Vereschak, Catholijn M. Jonker, Myrthe L. Tielman, "A Systematic Review on Fostering Appropriate Trust in Human-AI Interaction: Trends, Opportunities and Challenges", ACM Journal on Responsible Computing, Volume 1, Issue 4 Article No.: 26, Pages 1 - 45, 14 November 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3696449
  6. 2/26/2025 Intelligent agents in electronic commerce

    Assigned articles:

    1. MARIA FASLI, "On agent technology for e-commerce: trust, security and legal issues", The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 22:1, 3–35, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269888907001014
    2. Leonard Dung, "Understanding Artificial Agency", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2024, pqae010. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae010
    3. Alan Chan, Carson Ezell, Max Kaufmann, Kevin Wei, Lewis Hammond, Herbie Bradley, Emma Bluemke, Nitarshan Rajkumar, David Krueger, Noam Kolt, Lennart Heim, Markus Anderljung, "Visibility into AI Agents", FAccT '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Pages 958 - 973. https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3658948
  7. 3/5/2025 Economics of AI

    Assigned articles:

    1. Dirk Czarnitzki, Gastón P. Fernández, Christian Rammer, "Artificial intelligence and firm-level productivity ", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 211, July 2023, Pages 188-205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.05.008
    2. Kristina McElheran, J. Frank Li, Erik Brynjolfsson, Zachary Kroff, Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia Foster, Nikolas Zolas, "AI adoption in America: Who, what, and where", Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Volume 33, Issue 2, Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence and the Business Revolution, Pages: 375-415, Summer 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12576
    3. Cui, Zheyuan and Demirer, Mert and Jaffe, Sonia and Musolff, Leon and Peng, Sida and Salz, Tobias, "The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers", SSRN, 4945566, September 03, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4945566
  8. 3/12/2025 AI Regulation and Governance

    FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT PROPOSAL IS DUE

    Assigned articles:

    1. David Leslie and Antonella Maia Perini, "Future Shock: Generative AI and the International AI Policy and Governance Crisis", Harvard Data Science Review, Special Issue 5: Grappling With the Generative AI Revolution, Published: May 31, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.88b4cc98
    2. Daniel Carpenter, Carson Ezell, "An FDA for AI? Pitfalls and Plausibility of Approval Regulation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence", Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 7(1), 239-254. Published 2024-10-16. https://doi.org/10.1609/aies.v7i1.31633
    3. Kevin Wei, Carson Ezell, Nick Gabrieli, Chinmay Deshpande, "How Do AI Companies “Fine-Tune” Policy? Examining Regulatory Capture in AI Governance", Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 7(1), 1539-1555. Published 2024-10-16. https://doi.org/10.1609/aies.v7i1.31745
  9. 3/26/2025 Auditing of AI - I

    Assigned articles:

    1. Jakob Mökander, "Auditing of AI: Legal, Ethical and Technical Approaches", Digital Society, Volume 2, article number 49, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-023-00074-y
    2. Jakob Mökander, Jonas Schuett, Hannah Rose Kirk & Luciano Floridi, "Auditing large language models: a three-layered approach", AI and Ethics, Volume 4, pages 1085–1115, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-023-00289-2
    3. Khoa Lam, Benjamin Lange, Borhane Blili-Hamelin, Jovana Davidovic, Shea Brown, Ali Hasan, "A Framework for Assurance Audits of Algorithmic Systems", FAccT '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Pages 1078 - 1092. https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.365895
  10. 4/2/2025 Auditing of AI - II

    Assigned articles:

    1. Erwan Le Merrer, Ronan Pons and Gilles Tredan, "Algorithmic audits of algorithms, and the law", AI and Ethics, Volume 4, pages 1365–1375, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-023-00343-z
    2. Stephen Casper, Carson Ezell, Charlotte Siegmann, Noam Kolt, Taylor Lynn Curtis, Benjamin Bucknall, Andreas Haupt, Kevin Wei, Jérémy Scheurer, Marius Hobbhahn, Lee Sharkey, Satyapriya Krishna, Marvin Von Hagen, Silas Alberti, Alan Chan, Qinyi Sun, Michael Gerovitch, David Bau, Max Tegmark, David Krueger, Dylan Hadfield-Menell, "Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits", FAccT '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Pages 2254 - 2272. https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3659037
    3. Jonas Schuett, "Frontier AI developers need an internal audit function", Risk Analysis, 2024;1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.17665
  11. 4/9/2025 Applications of AI in Accounting, Auditing, and Law

    Assigned articles:

    1. Swati Sachan, Xi Liu (Lisa), "Blockchain-based auditing of legal decisions supported by explainable AI and generative AI tools", Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Volume 129, March 2024, 107666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2023.107666
    2. Hanchi Gu, Marco Schreyer, Kevin Moffitt, Miklos Vasarhelyi, "Artificial intelligence co-piloted auditing", International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Volume 54, September 2024, 100698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2024.100698
    3. Marc Eulerich, Aida Sanatizadeh, Hamid Vakilzadeh, and David A. Wood, "Is it all hype? ChatGPT’s performance and disruptive potential in the accounting and auditing industries", Review of Accounting Studies, Volume 29, pages 2318–2349, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-024-09833-9
  12. 4/16/2025 Large Language Model Problems

    Assigned articles:

    1. Isabel O. Gallegos, Ryan A. Rossi, Joe Barrow, Md Mehrab Tanjim, Sungchul Kim, Franck Dernoncourt, Tong Yu, Ruiyi Zhang, Nesreen K. Ahmed, "Bias and Fairness in Large Language Models: A Survey ", Computational Linguistics, (2024) 50 (3): 1097–1179. https://doi.org/10.1162/coli_a_00524
    2. Lei Huang, Weijiang Yu, Weitao Ma, Weihong Zhong, Zhangyin Feng, Haotian Wang, Qianglong Chen, Weihua Peng, Xiaocheng Feng, Bing Qin, Ting Liu, "A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models: Principles, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Open Questions", ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Accepted on 24 September 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3703155
    3. Zichao Lin, Shuyan Guan, Wending Zhang, Huiyan Zhang, Yugang Li and Huaping Zhang, "Towards trustworthy LLMs: a review on debiasing and dehallucinating in large language models", Artificial Intelligence Review, Volume 57, article number 243, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-024-10896-y
  13. 4/23/2025 AI Data

    Assigned articles:

    1. Soumia Zohra El Mestari, Gabriele Lenzini, Huseyin Demirci, "Preserving data privacy in machine learning systems ", Computers and Security, Volume 137, February 2024, 103605. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2023.103605
    2. Shayne Longpre, Robert Mahari, Anthony Chen, Naana Obeng-Marnu, Damien Sileo, William Brannon, Niklas Muennighoff, Nathan Khazam, Jad Kabbara, Kartik Perisetla, Xinyi (Alexis) Wu, Enrico Shippole, Kurt Bollacker, Tongshuang Wu, Luis Villa, Sandy Pentland & Sara Hooker, "A large-scale audit of dataset licensing and attribution in AI", Nature Machine Intelligence, 6, pages 975–987 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-024-00878-8
    3. Brian Belgodere, Pierre Dognin, Adam Ivankay, Igor Melnyk, Youssef Mroueh, Aleksandra Mojsilovi´c, Fellow, IEEE, Jiri Navratil, Apoorva Nitsure, Inkit Padhi, Mattia Rigotti, Jerret Ross, Yair Schiff, Radhika Vedpathak, and Richard A. Young, "Auditing and Generating Synthetic Data With Controllable Trust Trade-Offs", IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 773-788, Dec. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3477976
  14. 4/30/2025 Presentation of course research projects
  15. 5/7/2025 Final Exam