Instructor: Don Fallis
Office: SIRLS 14
Office Hours: 9:30-10:30 on Wednesdays and by appointment
Telephone: 621-5223
E-mail: fallis@email.arizona.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Economic theory looks at the supply and demand for all sorts of goods.  Library and information professionals, in particular, have to be concerned with the supply and demand for information.

This course will introduce basic concepts of economic theory (supply and demand curves, market equilibria, switching costs, asymmetric information, etc.) and apply these concepts to the dissemination of information.  In addition, we will examine how information goods differ from other sorts of goods and how these differences impact the economics of disseminating information.  Finally, we will apply economic theory to several specific issues in information services (e.g., user fees, resource sharing, and intellectual property).

IMPORTANT! The course will be partly virtual and partly on-campus. The on-campus portion will take place over two weekends: September 29-30 and October 27-28.  On the Saturdays, we will meet from 9 to 4. On the Sundays, we will meet from 8 to 1. (I will schedule plenty of breaks each day.)

The virtual portion will be on WebCT. Short assignments and other material will be posted during the course of the semester. Each student will be expected to participate in the online discussions.  There will be an exam after each of the two on-campus sessions.  These exams will be posted on WebCT.  Finally, each student will give an online presentation about an issue in the economics of information.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
 

Presentation	30%
Exam One	20%
Exam Two	20%
Short Assignments	20%
Participation	10%

READINGS:

You will only need to purchase one book for this course:

Kingma, Bruce R. 2001. The Economics of Information: A Guide to Economic and Cost-Benefit Analysis for Information Professionals. 2nd edition. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.

• Telfer, Margaret. 1998. "Librarians, Technology and the Economics of Information." http://www.magi.com/~mmelick/it98mar.htm.
• Lamont, Julian. 1997. "Distributive Justice." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/.
• DeLong, J. Bradford and Froomkin, A. Michael. "Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy." http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/OpEd/virtual/technet/spmicro.html.
• McCain, Roger. "Economics of Information Products." http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/Infoch/InfoToC.html.
• MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey and Hal R. Varian. 1997. "Economic FAQs About the Internet." http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jmm/papers/FAQs/econ-faqs-mit96-net.pdf.
• Varian, Hal R. 1995. "Pricing Information Goods." http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/price-info-goods.pdf.
• Varian, Hal R. 1996. "Pricing Electronic Journals." http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june96/06varian.html.
• Shapiro, Carl and Hal R. Varian. 1998. "Locked In, Not Locked Out." http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,2173,00.html.

Shapiro, Carl and Hal R. Varian. 1999. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston: Harvard Business School.

Varian, Hal R. 1999. "The Information Economy." http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/.

SCHEDULE:

FURTHER INFORMATION:

This class will have a listserv: IRLS588@listserv.arizona.edu. Please subscribe (see Subscription
Information for instructions).

LINKS:

Code of Academic Integrity

SIRLS Computer Requirements