Information economics
ITI-420
Paul B. Kantor
Fall 2002
MTh 11:10-12:50
Office Hours 4:00-6:00pm MTh.
Room 313 SCILS
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© Paul B. Kantor 2002.
The Final Take Home Problem set. Please read the instructions carefully. You my work together on problems, but you must indicate that you have done so, and it will cost you a penaly on the score. Considering each problem to be 100 points, working together will cost 10 points off whatever score your group earns.
Syllabus under development.
The course is divided into 3 sections. Precise dates and homework will be posted before the semester begins.
There are two required texts:
Shapiro, Carl & Varian, Hal. Information Rules. Harvard Business School Press. 1999. 352pp.
Shy, Oz. The Economics of Network Industries. Cambridge 2001. 315pp
They are both ordered at the bookstore.
Section A. Economics of Information Agencies
1. Libraries
2. Media
3. Internet service providers
4. Income and expenses ŕ keeping an organization running ŕ building a budget
5. For profit organizations -- closely held building a budget
6. Corporate entities building a budget
7. inputs and outputs
8. cost and benefits
9. impacts
10. goals and constraints
11. review and exams
Section B. Information and decisions
1. expected value of actions
2. certain and uncertain information
3. true information that changes the odds
4. information that may be false
5. expected value of uncertain information
6. the Monty Hall problem
7. game theory
8. pure and mixed strategies
9. games against nature ŕ pure strategies
10. games against an opponent ŕ mixed strategies
11. prisoner's dilemma and tit for tat
12. review and examination
Section C. Economic policy and information
1. communication and media
2. universal access
3. telephone
4. radio television
5. books -- intellectual property
6. music and movies
7. challenges of the internet
8. copyright, copies and caches
9. pornography and social norms
10. universal access and owner's rights
11. economic models for the internet
12. value received
13. advertising models
14. review and final exam.
Grading policy.
Grade is built on the exams, the homework, the Big Problem Set, and the team project presentation.
40% Examinations. There will be one or two in-class exams, and an in-class final during the exam period.
20% Homework -- small easy problems to make sure that you are understanding the ideas as we move through the course.
20% Big problem set: 6 quite challenging exercises that are to be handed in on the last day of classes. You are expected to work on these problems on your own. You can think of them as a very extended take-home exam.
20% The team project. Business Plan You may form into teams of 4 or 5 people for this project. We will use a "draft": system to ensure that you will work with some people whom you did not prefer to work with. This makes our team project experience annoyingly like the real world. The project is to select a type of information entity (for profit or not-for-profit) and develop a business plan for a new entrant into this sector. The business plan must include these components
A. A survey of entities of this type -- global picture
B. Detailed pictures of two examples that are like the one you propose
C. Description of the products and services you will provide
D. Description of your anticipated market -- size -- competitors
E. Details on your staffing and equipment needs
F. Proposal to a funding agency or venture capital firm
G. Your own assessment of the team's project/processes
You will hand in sections A-E, G at the last class. Each of Sections A-E is about 5 pages long double spaced. You must hand in two copies of the report. You will present F (10 minutes) as a team at one of the last two classes.
Section G includes the answers to these questions. Imagine that we wanted to use your groups experience as a “case study” for the class in the future. Please write it up as a case study with the following sections. (a) the goal of your class activity; (b) key factors to success (these can be factors that were present, and contributed to success, or whose absence kept you from success); (c) environmental factors that shaped the course of your project (these could be either academic, or related to the client); (d) lessons learned: what specific advice would you give to students next year who have formed a team and are trying to learn how to work with each other. Also discuss these hard questions: 1. Did your team meet its goals?. 2. If you had to allocate 100 points of credit among the team members, what would be a fair allocation?.
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Your work on the business plan must begin with these two reports
BR1. Selection of a meeting time/ mode. Assignment of personnel to tasks
BR2. GANTT chart and cpm chart for the project
For addional material baout the big project, see this .
This material is provided solely for the convenience of students in the ITI program at Rutgers University. This page is Copyright
(c) 2002 by Paul B. Kantor.
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/iip/cases/tumin.pdf A case study pointing up some policy issues related to making information
available easily on the web.