Editing Information good (section)

== Economic theory ==
[[Information economics]] refers to a microeconomic theory that studies how information affects economic activities.<ref>Coiera, E 2000, ‘Information economics and the internet’, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 215-221.</ref> An information marketplace differs from the market place of ordinary goods as information goods are not actually consumed and can be reproduced and distributed at a very low marginal cost.<ref>Ibid.</ref> The unique characteristics of information goods complicate many standard economic theories.<ref>Allen, B 1990, ‘Information as an economic commodity’, American Economic Review, vol. 80, no. 2, pp. 268–273.</ref>

Economic theories on information goods face the problem of dealing with two contradictory concepts. On one hand, information is regarded as an important economic resource for development as [[perfect information]] is a key requirement of the [[efficient-market hypothesis]].<ref>Evans, PB & Wurster, TS 1997, ‘Strategy and the new economics of information’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 75, no. 5, pp. 71-82.</ref> As a result, complete information should be accessible and made available to everyone at no cost. However, actual markets often depend on information as a commodity, resulting in information goods.<ref>Ibid.</ref> If information is a commodity, it will be potentially restricted in terms of access, cost, availability and completeness and thus, not be freely available.