The Scope of This Book Popular culture often refers to current times as the Information Age, classifying many of the technological, economic, and social changes of the past four deca:les under the rubric of the Information Revolution. But similar to the Iron Age be fore it, the description "Information Age" suggests the idea that information is a commodity in the marketplace, one that can be bought and sold as an item of value. When people seek to acquire information yet complain about information overload, and when organizations invest millions in information systems yet are unable to pinpoint the benefits, perhaps this reflects a difficulty with the as sessment of the value of this commodity relative to its cost, an inability to dis cern the useless from the useful from the wasteful. The Information Age requires us to assess the value, cost, and gain from information, and to do it from several different viewpoints. At the most elementary level is the individual who perceives a need for in formation-her current state of knowledge is insufficient and something needs to be understood, or clarified, or updated, or forecast. There is a universe of al ternative information sources from which to choose, some more informative than others, some more costly than others. The individual's problem is to evalu ate the alternatives and choose which sources to access. An organization comprising many information-seeking employees and agents must take a somewhat broader viewpoint.

Inhaltsangabe1. Introduction and Overview.- 1.1 Information in Decision Making.- 1.1.1 The Basic Framework for Decision.- 1.1.2 Information and Information Sources.- 1.1.3 Statistical and Pragmatic Information.- 1.1.4 Ex-Post Value and Gain.- 1.2 Information in the Organization.- 1.2.1 Information Systems.- 1.2.2 User Information Processing.- 1.2.3 Information System Accounting.- 1.3 Economics of the Incorporation of Information.- 1.3.1 The Criterion.- 1.3.2 Ex-Ante Components of Decision Making.- 1.4 The Expected Value of an Information Source.- 1.4.1 Information Structure and Informativeness.- 1.4.2 The Measurement of Information Value: Chapters 2 and 3.- 1.4.3 The Assessment of Information Value: Chapters 4 and 5.- 1.4.4 Case Studies of Information Value.- 1.4.5 The Theory of Information Value: Chapters 6 and 7.- 1.5 Information Value, Cost, and Procurement.- 1.5.1 The Optimal Information Structure.- 1.5.2 Procuring Direct Information.- 1.5.3 Case Studies of Information Cost, Value, and Choice.- 1.6 System Design for Information Gain.- 1.6.1 Decision Theory, Information Science,and System Design.- 1.6.2 Information Use Environments.- 1.6.3 A Model of System Design and User Behavior.- 1.7 Information Social Science.- 1.7.1 The Information Society.- 1.7.2 How Monumental Are Recent Events?.- 2. The Value of the Informed Decision.- 2.1 Elements of a Decision Problem Under Uncertainty.- 2.1.1 Utility of Outcome.- 2.1.2 Decision Problems.- 2.1.3 Decision Making.- 2.2 The Framing of the Decision Problem.- 2.2.1 Practical Issues in Framing.- 2.2.2 Framing the State Space and Initial Knowledge.- 2.2.3 The Incorporation of Information.- 2.3 Useful Facts About Statistical Information.- 2.3.1 Statistical Properties of the Information Structure.- 2.3.2 The Finite Model.- 2.3.3 Some Specific Expectations.- 2.4 Value of the Informed Decision.- 2.4.1 Extensive Form Analysis.- 2.4.2 Perfect Information.- 2.4.3 Worthless Information.- 3. Measures of the Value of Information.- 3.1 Measures of the Value of a Message.- 3.1.1 Cash-Equivalent Values of a Decision.- 3.1.2 Value of Decisions Posterior to the Message.- 3.1.3 The Simplest Special Case.- 3.1.4 Two Examples.- 3.1.5 The Need for Preposterior Evaluation.- 3.2 Measures of the Value of a Source.- 3.2.1 Incremental Value from Incorporating Information.- 3.2.2 The Range of the Expected Value of Information.- 4. The Assessment of Statistical Information.- 4.1 Coherent Assessment of Probability Distributions.- 4.1.1 Coherence and Consistency.- 4.1.2 Families of Probability Densities.- 4.2 Assessment of Beliefs and Foreknowledge.- 4.2.1 Assessing a Univariate Distribution.- 4.2.2 Obtaining Qualitative Foreknowledge of Information.- 4.2.3 Expert Resolution.- 4.2.4 Analysis of a Track Record.- 4.3 Simplifying the Assessment.- 4.3.1 The Preposterior Mean.- 4.3.2 The Calibrated Noiseless Model.- 5. Models with Convenient Assessment and Interpretation.- 5.1 Models with Payoff Quadratic in the Action.- 5.1.1 The General Case.- 5.1.2 The Bivariate Normal Case.- 5.1.3 The Quadratic Team.- 5.2 Models with Payoff Linear in the State.- 5.2.1 Raiffa and Schlaifer's Approach.- 5.2.2 Application to Statistical Decision Problems.- 5.2.3 Application in a Dichotomy.- 5.2.4 The Inventory Problem.- 5.3 Models with Concave-Exponential Utility.- 5.3.1 Information Value with Separable Outcome.- 5.3.2 Applications with the Bivariate Normal Information Structure.- 5.4 Models with Nonseparable Outcome; Betting and Investing Models.- 5.4.1 Nonseparability and Information Value:Two Examples.- 5.4.2 Arrow's Contingent Securities Model.- 5.5 Models with Multicategorical State Description.- 5.5.1 Multicategorical Information Structures.- 5.5.2 Bidding Models.- 5.6 Dynamic Models and the Role of Timeliness.- 5.6.1 Dynamic Decision Problems.- 5.6.2 Delay.- 5.6.3 The Value of Timeliness and Accuracy.- 5.6.4 Assessing the Joint Distribution of Messages and States Via the Kalman Filter.- 5.6.5 Stochastic Control Theory.- 5.7 Approximations a