|
Information Goods
Information goods are commodities that provide value to consumers as a result of the information it contains and refers to any good or service that can be digitalized. Examples of information goods includes books, journals, computer software, music and videos. Information goods can be copied, shared, resold or rented. Information goods are durable and thus, will not be destroyed through consumption. As information goods have distinct characteristics as they are experience goods, have returns to scale and are non-rivalrous, the laws of supply and demand that depend on the scarcity of products do not frequently apply to information goods. As a result, the buying and selling of information goods differs from ordinary goods. Information goods are goods whose unit production costs (including distribution costs) are negligible compared to their amortized development costs. Well-informed companies have development costs that increase with product quality, but their unit cost is zero. Once an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Externality
In economics, an externality is an Indirect costs, indirect cost (external cost) or indirect benefit (external benefit) to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced components that are involved in either consumer or producer consumption. Air pollution from motor vehicles is one example. The Air pollution#Health effects, cost of air pollution to society is not paid by either the producers or users of motorized transport. Water pollution from mills and factories are another example. All (water) consumers are made worse off by pollution but are not compensated by the market for this damage. The concept of externality was first developed by Alfred Marshall in the 1890s and achieved broader attention in the works of economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, Arthur Pigou in the 1920s. The prototypical example of a negative externality is environmental pollution. Pigou argued that a tax, equal to the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Economics
Information economics or the economics of information is the branch of microeconomics that studies how information and information systems affect an economy and economic decisions. One application considers information embodied in certain types of commercial products that are "expensive to produce but cheap to reproduce." Samuelson, Paul A., and William D. Nordhaus (2001). Economics, p.194. Examples include computer software (e.g., Microsoft Windows), pharmaceuticals and technical books. Once information is recorded "on paper, in a computer, or on a compact disc, it can be reproduced and used by a second person essentially for free." Without the basic research, initial production of high-information commodities may be too unprofitable to market, a type of market failure. Government subsidization of basic research has been suggested as a way to mitigate the problem. The subject of "information economics" is treated under ''Journal of Economic Literature'' classification code ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfect Information
Perfect information is a concept in game theory and economics that describes a situation where all players in a game or all participants in a market have knowledge of all relevant information in the system. This is different than complete information, which implies Common knowledge (logic), common knowledge of each agent's utility functions, payoffs, strategies and "types". A system with perfect information may or may not have complete information. In economics this is sometimes described as "no hidden information" and is a feature of perfect competition. In a market with perfect information all consumers and producers would have complete and instantaneous knowledge of all market prices, their own utility and cost functions. In game theory, a sequential game has perfect information if each player, when making any decision, is perfectly informed of all the events that have previously occurred, including the "initialization event" of the game (e.g. the starting hands of each player ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Efficient-market Hypothesis
The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information. Because the EMH is formulated in terms of risk adjustment, it only makes testable predictions when coupled with a particular model of risk. As a result, research in financial economics since at least the 1990s has focused on market anomalies, that is, deviations from specific models of risk. The idea that financial market returns are difficult to predict goes back to Bachelier, Mandelbrot, and Samuelson, but is closely associated with Eugene Fama, in part due to his influential 1970 review of the theoretical and empirical research. The EMH provides the basic logic for modern risk-based theories of asset prices, and frameworks such as consumption-based asset pricing and int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Market Failure
In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006). ''Economics'', New York, Worth Publishers. The first known use of the term by economists was in 1958,Francis M. Bator (1958). "The Anatomy of Market Failure," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', 72(3) pp351–379(press +). but the concept has been traced back to the Victorian writers John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick.Steven G. Medema (2007). "The Hesitant Hand: Mill, Sidgwick, and the Evolution of the Theory of Market Failure," ''History of Political Economy'', 39(3)pp. 331��358. 200Online Working Paper. Market failures are often associated with public goods, time-inconsistent preferences, Information asymmetry, information asymmetries, Market structure, failures of competition, principal–agent problems, externalities,Jean-Jacques L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adverse Selection
In economics, insurance, and risk management, adverse selection is a market situation where Information asymmetry, asymmetric information results in a party taking advantage of undisclosed information to benefit more from a contract or trade. In an ideal world, buyers should pay a price which reflects their willingness to pay and the value to them of the product or service, and sellers should sell at a price which reflects the quality of their goods and services. However, when one party holds information that the other party does not have, they have the opportunity to damage the other party by maximizing self-utility, concealing relevant information, and perhaps even lying. This opportunity has secondary effects: the party without the information may take steps to avoid entering into an unfair contract, perhaps by withdrawing from the interaction; a party may ask for higher or lower prices, diminishing the volume of trade in the market; or parties may be deterred from participatin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lemon Problem
"The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a widely cited seminal paper in the field of economics which explores the concept of asymmetric information in markets. The paper was written in 1970 by George Akerlof and published in the ''Quarterly Journal of Economics''. The paper's theory has since been applied to many types of markets. Akerlof examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, which ultimately leaves goods that are found to be defective after purchase in the market, noted by the term 'lemon' in the title of the paper. In American slang, a lemon is a car that is found to be defective after it has been bought. Akerlof's theory of the "Market for Lemons" paper applies to markets with information asymmetry, focusing on the used car market. Information asymmetry within the market relates to the seller having more information about the quality of the car as o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asymmetric Information
In contract theory, mechanism design, and economics, an information asymmetry is a situation where one party has more or better information than the other. Information asymmetry creates an imbalance of power in transactions, which can sometimes cause the transactions to be inefficient, causing market failure in the worst case. Examples of this problem are adverse selection, moral hazard,Dembe, Allard E. and Boden, Leslie I. (2000). "Moral Hazard: A Question of Morality?" New Solutions 2000 10(3). 257–79 and monopolies of knowledge. A common way to visualise information asymmetry is with a scale, with one side being the seller and the other the buyer. When the seller has more or better information, the transaction will more likely occur in the seller's favour ("the balance of power has shifted to the seller"). An example of this could be when a used car is sold, the seller is likely to have a much better understanding of the car's condition and hence its market value than the bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Goods
In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good)Oakland, W. H. (1987). Theory of public goods. In Handbook of public economics (Vol. 2, pp. 485–535). Elsevier. is a goods, commodity, product or service that is both excludable, non-excludable and rivalry (economics), non-rivalrous and which is typically provided by a government and paid for through taxation. Use by one person neither prevents access by other people, nor does it reduce availability to others, so the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person. This is in contrast to a Common good (economics), common good, such as wild fish stocks in the ocean, which is non-excludable but rivalrous to a certain degree. If too many fish were harvested, the stocks would deplete, limiting the access of fish for others. A public good must be valuable to more than one user, otherwise, its simultaneous availability to more than one person would be economically irrelevant. Capital goods ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Public Goods
Digital public goods are Public good (economics), public goods in the form of software, data sets, AI, AI models, standards or content. These goods are generally free cultural works and are intended to contribute to sustainable national and international digital development. The term "digital public good" has been in use since at least April 2017, when Nicholas Gruen wrote ''Building the Public Goods of the Twenty-First Century''. The concept has attracted attention as new technologies are increasingly seen as having the potential to benefit society, leading to the development of evaluation frameworks for competing projects. Some countries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private sector entities have identified digital technologies as a tool for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This application of public goods in digital platforms has led to the use of the term "digital public goods". Various international agencies, including UNICEF and the United Nat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in most of the world's List of national legal systems, legal systems."property as a common descriptor of the field probably traces to the foundation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by the United Nations." in Mark A. Lemley''Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding'', Texas Law Review, 2005, Vol. 83:1031, page 1033, footnote 4. Supporters of intellectual property laws often describe their main purpose as encouragin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users. The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
