Here's an academic paper about spamonomics that's being widely read (PDF). If you don't wanna read the whole thing, just glance at the bit titled 'Key Intuitions' - it's very elegantly written.

The paper contains most of the components of my spamonomics solution from a few months back - the assumption that technological solutions are inefficient because of their brittleness (or hackability), and that economic solutions will be favored by an efficient market, a costless pricing mechanism (ie a bond), and an aggregate filtering mechanism which exploits asymmetric information. It also presents a detailed game-theoretic model if you're into that kind of thing.

Here's a list of refs to spam on bubblegeneration - most of them are about this kind of model.

It's nice to know that I'm ahead of the academic curve (not that I'd ever toot my own horn or anything). Maybe this should be the first time academics cite a blog (!)