Description
This text clearly presents the fundamentals that users need in order to develop basic skills for simple cost-benefit analyses of goods and services. It provides students, librarians and information professionals with a useful introduction to economics and cost-benefit analysis, and it helps them make better financial and management decisions. The book covers cost analysis of information goods and services, benefit analysis, information as a public good, information externalities, intellectual property and monopolies, uncertainty and risk, pricing information, opportunity costs, access versus ownership, and the economics of the Internet and digital libraries. The author’s clear explanations of economic terms and models are illustrated with examples from library services and information markets. In this edition, updated research and examples of economic principles have been incorporated, and there is an additional chapter on Internet economic and digital libraries. Designed as a text for classes on the economics of information, this work is also suitable for courses on information resource management, information policy and library management, and as a professional guide for interested practitioners.
