Information Economics


Book Description

This new text book by Urs Birchler and Monika Butler is an introduction to the study of how information affects economic relations. The authors provide a narrative treatment of the more formal concepts of Information Economics, using easy to understand and lively illustrations from film and literature and nutshell examples. The book first covers the economics of information in a 'man versus nature' context, explaining basic concepts like rational updating or the value of information. Then in a 'man versus man' setting, Birchler and Butler describe strategic issues in the use of information: the make-buy-or-copy decision, the working and failure of markets and the important role of outguessing each other in a macroeconomic context. It closes with a 'man versus himself' perspective, focusing on information management within the individual. This book also comes with a supporting website (www.alicebob.info), maintained by the authors.




The Economics of Attention


Book Description

If economics is about the allocation of resources, then what is the most precious resource in our new information economy? Certainly not information, for we are drowning in it. No, what we are short of is the attention to make sense of that information. With all the verve and erudition that have established his earlier books as classics, Richard A. Lanham here traces our epochal move from an economy of things and objects to an economy of attention. According to Lanham, the central commodity in our new age of information is not stuff but style, for style is what competes for our attention amidst the din and deluge of new media. In such a world, intellectual property will become more central to the economy than real property, while the arts and letters will grow to be more crucial than engineering, the physical sciences, and indeed economics as conventionally practiced. For Lanham, the arts and letters are the disciplines that study how human attention is allocated and how cultural capital is created and traded. In an economy of attention, style and substance change places. The new attention economy, therefore, will anoint a new set of moguls in the business world—not the CEOs or fund managers of yesteryear, but new masters of attention with a grounding in the humanities and liberal arts. Lanham’s The Electronic Word was one of the earliest and most influential books on new electronic culture. The Economics of Attention builds on the best insights of that seminal book to map the new frontier that information technologies have created.




The Pandemic Information Gap


Book Description

Why solving the information problem should be at the core of our pandemic response: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis. COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a lack of good information. A pandemic is essentially an information problem: this is the enlightening and provocative idea at the heart of this book. If we solve the information problem, argues economist Joshua Gans, we can defeat the virus. For example, when we don't know who is infected, we have to act as if everyone is infected. If we actively manage the information problem--if we know who is infected and with whom they had contact--we can suppress the virus or buy time for vaccine development. This is an expanded version of an eBook originally published as Economics in the Age of COVID-19.




The Economics of Artificial Intelligence


Book Description

A timely investigation of the potential economic effects, both realized and unrealized, of artificial intelligence within the United States healthcare system. In sweeping conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence on many sectors of the economy, healthcare has received relatively little attention. Yet it seems unlikely that an industry that represents nearly one-fifth of the economy could escape the efficiency and cost-driven disruptions of AI. The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges brings together contributions from health economists, physicians, philosophers, and scholars in law, public health, and machine learning to identify the primary barriers to entry of AI in the healthcare sector. Across original papers and in wide-ranging responses, the contributors analyze barriers of four types: incentives, management, data availability, and regulation. They also suggest that AI has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs. Understanding both the benefits of and barriers to AI adoption is essential for designing policies that will affect the evolution of the healthcare system.




The Economics of Information


Book Description

Focuses on the economics of information goods and services, which are sufficiently different from other types of goods and services that a complete understanding of their differences is important to information managers and policymakers.




The Economics, Concept, and Design of Information Intermediaries


Book Description

The Internet provides an infrastructure that makes the steadily increasing amount of information accessible efficiently, quickly, and inexpensively. Closely connec ted with this opportunity is the danger that the available information will over charge the individual information seeker's capability to process the information and to judge its quality. In this situation, information intermediaries can take upon the role of an expert and a guarantor of quality similar to intermediaries in markets for physical goods or finances. Thus, information intermediaries can be a trust worthy, information processing third party, mediating between information seekers and information sources. The current technological development has created information technologies that are capable to efficiently process large amounts of information. However, the pro vision of intermediation services necessitates a thorough examination of the basic principles underlying the economics of information intermediaries as well as a sound foundation on information technologies. The present work by Frank Rose addresses the fundamental question concerning the economics of information intermediaries by means of an abstract model. The model focuses on services that concentrate on the search and mediation of information, and identifies the essential influencing factors of the intermediary's environment. The model is then employed to investigate the impact of environmental conditions on the information intermediary on the one hand, and the optimal strategy of the information intermediary as a reaction to environmental conditions on the other hand.




Incentives


Book Description

This book examines incentives at work to see how and how well coordination is achieved by motivating individual decision makers.







The Economics of Imperfect Information


Book Description

This book provides a systematic presentation of new microeconomic theories of imperfect information.




Economics of Information Security and Privacy


Book Description

The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) is the leading forum for interdisciplinary research and scholarship on information security and privacy, combining ideas, techniques, and expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science. In 2009, WEIS was held in London, at UCL, a constituent college of the University of London. Economics of Information Security and Privacy includes chapters presented at WEIS 2009, having been carefully reviewed by a program committee composed of leading researchers. Topics covered include identity theft, modeling uncertainty's effects, future directions in the economics of information security, economics of privacy, options, misaligned incentives in systems, cyber-insurance, and modeling security dynamics. Economics of Information Security and Privacy is designed for managers, policy makers, and researchers working in the related fields of economics of information security. Advanced-level students focusing on computer science, business management and economics will find this book valuable as a reference.