Information economics is a branch of information science, which studies the economic phenomenon of information and its movement and change characteristics. Its main research contents include:
1. The economic function of information. Mainly study the economic attribute of information and its role in economic development; The position and function of information industry in national economy; The influence of the development and perfection of information technology on social economy: the relationship between information and the scale, structure, organization and management of social production; The application process and function of information economy model in economic structure.
2. The cost and value of information. Mainly study the qualitative and quantitative description of information value; The relationship between the value and cost of information; The embodiment of information value; The measurement standard and calculation method of information value.
3. The economic effect of information. Mainly study the ratio between the use value of information and labor consumption; Calculation and evaluation of information economic benefits; The best investment and investment effect of information work in social production: natural factors and social factors affecting the effect of information economy; Ways and means to improve the effect of information economy.
4. Information industry structure. Mainly study the structure of information industry and its development law and trend; The relationship between information industry and departmental economic structure, service industry structure and educational institutions; The influence of information industry structure on employment structure; Analysis of information factors and non-information factors of national economic structure change, etc.
5. Information system. Including how to establish and develop a perfect information system; The influence of the aggregation and dispersion of information systems on the value of information systems; Examining the standards and methods of information system evaluation from the perspective of economics; Economic and social benefits of information system and their relationship; Economic management of information system; Optimization of information system selection, etc.
6. Information technology. Using the principle of technical economics to study the role of information technology in improving the efficiency of information economy; Compare the application of various information technologies and put forward the best scheme of adopting new information technologies; Understand the characteristics and laws of information technology development.
7. Information economy theory. Including the research on the object, content, nature, method, function and history of information economics.
Asymmetric Information Environment and Microeconomics of Information
Information asymmetry refers to the private information related to the transaction that both parties have and others don't know.
In the "prisoner's dilemma", prisoners don't know each other's choices, so they choose to confess; The famous "lemon market" (defective market) in the product market, sellers have more information about products than buyers; In the labor market, there are problems of wages, incentives and adverse selection, and the boss doesn't know who is the most capable manager among many subordinates. I don't know whether the new manager can put all his energy into his work, and the subordinates don't know what the boss's profit is. There is also the breeding and punishment of corruption; There is information asymmetry in the management of false advertisements and fake and inferior commodities. Information economics calls the party who owns private information an agent. The party who doesn't know this information is called the principal. Therefore, the general information asymmetry problem can be attributed to the "principal-agent" model. In the asymmetric information environment. The establishment condition of "principal-agent" relationship is that the remuneration paid by the principal to the agent is not lower than the opportunity cost of the latter's participation in this contract, and at the same time, it is necessary to maximize its own profits. What should be the best choice of the principal under the condition of participation constraint and incentive compatibility constraint? Hasani, a game theory scholar, made a deep research on this issue and defined Bayesian-Nash equilibrium, in order to seek the optimal contract or institutional arrangement and make the agent tell the truth. Customers can also get information through some signals, such as prices, honors and advertisements. Asymmetric information environment is one of the important conditions for microeconomics. The perfect competition model of microeconomics is hard to really exist in reality. The research on the market under the condition of incomplete information has gradually developed into micro-information economics. In the early 1990s, China began to introduce the achievements of micro-information economics in the 1960s and 1970s. With the development of China's economic theory and practice, it has attracted some attention. 1996 After the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two researchers of information economics, more and more attention was paid to the research of information economics in China, and more and more papers and works were introduced, studied and applied.
Macroeconomics of information
Macro-information economics was founded by Mahlup of Princeton University and Porter of Stanford University. It regards the information industry as the fourth industry in agriculture, industry and service industry, and it is the inevitable requirement and result of the development of information industry and information economy to explain the development of information economy with statistics and quantitative analysis. Information economists represented by Wu believe that the main research contents of macro information economics are:
The emergence and development of information industry, as well as its position and role in the national economy: issues related to the information market, such as the calculation of the value and price of information commodities, the investigation of market participants' behavior and the expansion of market capacity; Study the laws of production, exchange, consumption and distribution of information commodities and the effective allocation of information resources;
National economy informatization and how to transform traditional industry and agriculture with information technology, as well as information system research with information technology as the main research object. Generally speaking, macro-information economics not only studies the economic operation of information industry, but also studies the informatization of social macro-economy.
The combination of micro-information economics and macro-information economics
At present, in the research process of information economics, economists pay more attention to the development of micro-information economics. Attach great importance to the introduction of micro-information economics and the study of economic problems under various asymmetric information conditions. However, the research on macro-information economics is less involved. Although information and commodities have different characteristics. As a new industry, information industry also has its special economic laws, but it has attracted more attention from information scholars than economists. Because of this, information economics has injected vitality and vigor into informatics. There are some very active information economics researchers in the field of information science, who are not only engaged in the economic research of information commodities and information industries. It also gradually entered the field of micro-information economics, trying to combine the two into a complete system. The main method is to start with the contract theory under the condition of asymmetric information, and then study the search of information (various signals), as well as the cost and transaction cost of information, and gradually transition to the field of macro-information economics.
Research on the Application of Information Economics
Although micro information economics is also called theoretical information economics, its applied research is not simply equivalent to macro information economics. In recent two years, the applied research of micro-information economics has played an important role in China's current economic reform and institutional arrangements and market norms during the transition period, and it is a promising research field of information economics.
As mentioned above, micro-information economics is to study how to seek a contract and system to arrange and adjust the economic behavior of both sides under uncertain and asymmetric information conditions, which is also called asymmetric information economics or contract theory.
Under this premise, the result of any economic behavior is certain and unique. Therefore, the task of microeconomics is to optimize decision-making, that is, how to realize the optimal allocation of resources and maximize efficiency. Moreover, many effective analysis methods have been formed in its own development, which makes micro-information economics more practical than traditional economics and can study and solve practical economic problems more widely and deeply.
abstract
Western information economics is essentially the application of asymmetric information game theory in economics and the new development of microeconomics. The problem of game theory is the decision-making of decision-makers and the balance that these decisions can achieve when their behaviors interact, while the problem of information economics is the information asymmetry when their behaviors interact. Here, asymmetric information refers to information owned by some participants and not owned by others.
The information discussed in information economics refers to this kind of information that affects the interests of both parties, not all kinds of possible information. Asymmetric information can be divided into two categories according to its content.
One is the asymmetry of knowledge between the two parties, which means that one party does not know the information of the other party's ability and health. This information is exogenous and predetermined, not caused by the actions of both parties. For this kind of information asymmetry, information economics calls it hiding knowledge and information.
The second kind of information asymmetry means that the information owned by both parties is symmetrical when signing the contract, but after signing the contract, one party cannot manage and restrain the behavior of the other party. This kind of information asymmetry is endogenous and depends on the behavior of the other party. For this kind of information asymmetry, information economics calls it implicit behavior. For example, after signing a contract, whether an employee works hard or is lazy cannot be freely controlled by the employer. To solve this problem, we must implement an incentive mechanism to make employees take correct actions. For example, what kind of salary system or welfare system should be used to make employees work hard.
In specific work, we will encounter information asymmetry in two situations. According to the time when information asymmetry occurs, the previous information asymmetry will cause adverse selection problems, and the subsequent information asymmetry will cause moral hazard problems.
Adverse selection and moral hazard are two basic research topics of information economics. For example, if the board of directors does not know the manager's ability in advance, and the manager knows it, there will be adverse selection problems; If both parties know the manager's ability in advance, but don't know the manager's efforts after signing the contract, there will be hidden behavior of moral hazard; Or don't know the manager's ability in advance, but the manager discovered his ability after signing the contract, but the board of directors didn't know it. Is this also a moral hazard problem? Hide information, because the manager may take the customer with him when he leaves.
In the case of asymmetric information, adverse selection and moral hazard may occur at any time. Western information economics believes that the way to reduce or exempt is to establish an incentive mechanism and a signal transmission mechanism.