Talk:Information economics

message: Hmm.. It logged me out while editing.  Oh well.    This is my first wikipedia page, so please go at it.
Rick 03:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: first wikipedia page

message: Is it possible to have a solid example for the screening section like in the signaling section -- My interpretation was that if someone is not aloud to ask about your religous beliefs, they would apply screening by asking a question about some obscure reference in the Bible or Koran and use your response to make inferences (maybe a bit more subtle than this example). Is this an accurate interpretation? 210.211.116.15 14:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: example for the screening section

message: Be advised that the term "Information Economics" had another use that predates this use of it.  It refers to a particular weighted scoring system described in the book "Information Economics: Linking Business Performance to Information Technology" by Marilyn M. Parker, Robert J. Benson, and H.E. Trainor.  This method has no relationship to the work of Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz.
:You are right that the Nobel-prize-winning work of Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz is unrelated to the topics covered in Parker, Benson, and Trainor's book.  But the Parker et al. book (published 1988, unless there is an earlier version I'm unaware of) does not predate the work of Akerlof et al. (key papers in 1970 and 1973 cited in this article). --Rinconsoleao 09:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly the work of Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz predates Parker, Benson, and Trainor.  I was saying that Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz didn't actually use the specific term "information economics" back then, although their terms were closely related.Hubbardaie 21:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately, there has been some inconsistency in usage when referring to this area of microeconomic theory. I believe the most standard name is "information economics", but I have also seen "economics of information" and "information theory", and "contract theory" is a closely related topic. --Rinconsoleao 09:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, information theory is quite another thing that predates all of this.  The seminal paper on information theory was in the late 1940's.  I discuss it in my book "How to Measure Anything".  I hope we don't throw that one in the mix, too, and cause even more confusion. Hubbardaie 21:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I would happily support the construction of a disambiguation page for "information economics". However, since it is a core area of microeconomic theory, I believe it is far more influential than any of the management techniques you have mentioned on this talk page. Therefore I think the default topic reached by querying "information economics" should be the field of microeconomic theory studied by Akerlof et al. --Rinconsoleao 09:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree that what the authors of these methods called "economics of information" or "asymetric information" is core to microeconomic theory but I'm less convinced that "information economics" is the right term for it.  I can't seem to find where Akerlof, Spence, or Stiglitz ever used that exact phrase to describe their work.  At least none of the cited work uses that phrase.  But even if this specific title is kept, I think there is precedent for how to handle it when there are less common, less notable uses of the same word or phrase.  Simply keep this article as it is and have a disambiguation tag at the top in case they meant some other use of the term.Hubbardaie 21:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other uses of Information Economics or renaming 

message: Here are the variety of topics that would fall under this umbrella and, where needed, more specific names for them.  Each of these should have a separate article after disambiguation:
*Asymetric information in markets - the topic of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics
*Information Economics - the name of the weighted scoring method for IT projects as described in the book "Information Economics: Linking Business Performance to Information Technology" by Parker, Bensen and Trainor.
*Information Economics - a set of method described by Paul A. Strassman for benchmarking the efficiency and effectiveness of information use in an entire organization.
*Applied Information Economics - A particular risk and value analysis method developed in 1995.  Based on a combination of methods from decision theory, uncertainty modeling and portfolio management, it was initially developed for large IT investments, but with applications outside of IT.
*Expected Value of Information - a method from decision theory for computing the value of uncertainty-reduction in one-player games against states of uncertainty.
Hubbardaie 05:33, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation? 

message: There is another problem with the entire structure of this article.  It starts out saying that Information Economics is based on the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem and then goes on to say that it comprises the topics "of information asymmetries, the economics of information goods, and the economics of information technology. A related area of study is economics of security."
:You are right. Saying that it is "based on the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem" is too narrow and therefore misleading. I have rewritten the introduction to be more correct. --Rinconsoleao 08:53, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greenwald-Stiglitz and Information Economics 

message: The previous section has started to drift into several (interesting) discussions -- I want to focus only on the question of disambiguation. Currently a wikipedia search on "information" returns (obviously) the page titled Information. Reading this page one discovers the link to an existing disambiguation page Information (disambiguation). If the outcome of this discussion is to indeed create a disambiguation page, then I would suggest that we use the existing page. This page could then be used to place link to pages relevant to those interested in the use of information in economics or management or information systems, etc. My sense is that disambiguation is the way to go. I'll reserve my comments regarding JEL codes and page titles for the prior section of this page. Corebreeches 20:43, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation Redux 

message: Other tidbits include the following by subcategory. 
:JEL: D80 - General 
::1390 hits for JEL D80
::31 hits for "Information economics" JEL D80
::32 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D80 
:JEL D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty 
::3790 hits for JEL D81
::23 hits for "Information economics" JEL D81
::24 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D81 
:JEL: D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information 
::5930 hits for JEL D82
::148 hits for "Information economics" JEL D82
::86 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D82 
:JEL: D83 - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge 
::3040 hits for JEL D83 
::40 hits for "Information economics" 
::120 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D83 
:JEL: D84 - Expectations; Speculation 
::1110 hits for JEL D84
::9 hits for "Information economics" JEL D84
::120 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D84 
:JEL: D85 - Network Formation 
::238 hits for JEL D85
::4 hits for "Information economics" JEL D85
::7 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D85 
:JEL: D86 - Economics of contract law 
::176 hits for JEL D86
::2 hits for "Information economics" JEL D86
::2 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D86 
:JEL: D89 - Other 
::278 hits for JEL D89
::4 hits for "Information economics" JEL D89
::4 hits for "Economics of information" JEL D89
They seem to be used in similar ways with the differences most apparent and significant for JEL D82, JEL D83, and JEL D84.   But the terms leak like a sieve when it comes to fine-grained descriptions of any one area. They are descriptive terms, not jargon, as Jeremy Tobacman noted above.  --Thomasmeeks 00:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Information econ" vs. "Econ of information" by JEL D8 subcategory

message: I think this statement is overly strong--I'm not sure it's right even in principle. Lots of information goods are provided at zero cost. Also "infeasible" is a poor choice of words for an economics article, since it is clearly possible for Microsoft to give away Vista for nearly nothing. Maybe "unprofitable" instead? CRETOG8(t/c) 16:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  classic marginal cost pricing completely infeasible 

message: 1. Principal-agent
I did some research on JStor, and the earliest appeareance in the economics literature of principal-agent theory is in Arrow's (1968) article on AER. Arrow argues that:
... The principal-agent relation is very pervasive in all economies, and especially in modern ones; by definition the agent has been selected for his specialized knowledge and therefore the principal can never hope completely to check the agent's performance.
I'm pretty sure that, pre-1968, no one was aware of the bigger picture of the principal-agent theory, since Moral Hazard was not inmediately linked to Adverse Selection nor Signalling. Instead, it was treated as an isolated issue that belonged exclusively to the insurance markets. Therefore, the concept of Contract theory was also not known then. Checking the seminal paper of Arrow (1963) on AER -the one about medical care-, no mention is made of Principal-agent. 
To-do: Some etymology from the insurance literature and/or Moral Hazard would be appreciated, since it seems to be the oldest trace of all the others definitions. --Forich (talk) 19:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some etymology of each concept related to the economics of information 

message: I added a reference to Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society to the section on information and the price mechanism. However, I wasn't sure if the citation needed was in reference to Hayek's contribution to information economics or to his influence of the authors listed at the end of the section so I left the citation needed and the reference to the authors. I'll try to see if I can find direct reference(s) to his influence of those authors.Trevallion42 (talk) 19:32, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tried to flesh out the section on information and the price mechanism 

message: Dr. Duffy has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:
We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.
Dr. Duffy has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:
*Reference : John Duffy & Felix Munoz-Garcia, 2010. "Signaling Concerns about Fairness: Cooperation under Uncertain Social Preferences," Working Papers 2010-19, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:57, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dr. Duffy's comment on this article 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have added additional relevant information around information systems that help build a better foundation for new readers. These include of network effects and critical mass with more room for addition material around these. Applied links to others pages for full information as this page is more general and broad. Room to also talk about Gig-economy and Multi-sided platforms S4524921 (talk) 04:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Added Network effects and Critical Mass