The Value of Shared Information Services

In this paper, we analyze the value of shared information services, both when they are operated by their members and when they are implemented by a monopoly provider. The value of information is defined as the compensating variation in price that makes a risk-averse agent indifferent between procuring an informative signal or not. We provide investment sharing rules that implement an individually rational Nash bargaining solution and compare this to the situation in which a nonscreening monopolist maximizes profits. We find that any efficient price schedule for information should take into account (1) the agentís confidence in the signal, (2) the project risk, (3) the agentís risk aversion, as well as (4) her wealth and the mean return if at least one of them is quite small. Interestingly, in a cooperative bargaining situation an agentís investment share may either increase or decrease when risk aversion goes up, depending on whether demand for information decreases faster than implicit bargaining power relative to the other agents or vice versa. We further show that even for CARA utilities, there are important wealth effects. Our results, including the definition of a critical Nash network size, provide a benchmark for the value of information that is shared by a group of agents for use in their respective projects and not employed strategically against each other

The CIARD RING, an infrastructure for interoperability of agricultural research information services

Creating integrated information services in agriculture giving access and adding value to information residing in distributed sources remains a major challenge. In distributed architectures, value added services by definition interface several information sources / services. Therefore value added services cannot be built without an awareness of what others have done: which sources are available, how to tap into them, how to exploit their semantics. The Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) Routemap to Information Nodes and Gateways (RING) is a portal offering an interlinked registry of existing information services in agriculture. The CIARD RING covers both information services and sources: in nowadays information architectures, the distinction between the two is very fluid. In the RING, the definition of "service" includes any form of providing information from one server instance (website, mail server, web services, XML archive...) to many clients (browsers, email clients, news readers, harvesters...) The services registered in the RING are described in details and categorized according to criteria that are relevant to the use of the service and its interoperability. The RING categorizes and interlinks the featured services according to criteria such as: standards adopted, vocabulary used, technology used, protocols implemented, level of interoperability etc. In addition, it features detailed instructions on how the registered services can be "interoperated". The vision is that the RING will become the common global technical platform for the community of agricultural information professionals for accessing, sharing and exchanging information through web services. This paper describes how the RING provides an infrastructure for enhancing interoperability of information sources and thus paves the way towards better accessibility of information through value-added and better targeted services

The market for lawyers: The value of information on the quality of legal services

We study the value of information on the quality of legal services by analyzing the incentives of litigants to hire high-quality lawyers, the incentives of lawyers to invest in quality-enhancing activities and the effect of legal representation on the decision-making behaviour of adjudicators. In a setting where adjudicators have reputational concerns, we show that better information over the quality of legal representation generates a tradeoff. On the one hand, it allows for a better match between the value of a legal dispute and the quality of the legal representation. This also has the effect of increasing the incentives of lawyers to invest in quality-enhancing training. On the other hand, better information over the quality of legal representation may induce adjudicators to bias their decisions in favour of the litigant with the highest-quality lawyer and this generates allocative inefficiency. We discuss the implications of these effects on the desirability of quality certification system (such as the Queen’s Counselor system) in the market for the legal professions

Improving customer satisfaction: changes as a result of Customer Value Discovery

Objective: To identify Gold Standard Services for customers in an academic library and determine whether interventions following the identification of customer value increased student satisfaction. Methods: “Customer Discovery Workshops” were undertaken with academic staff and undergraduate on‐campus students to provide managers and library staff with information on the services and resources that customers valued, and what irritated them about existing services and resources. The impact of interventions was assessed two years after the research using a university student satisfaction survey and an independent national student satisfaction survey. Results: The findings resulted in significant changes to the way forward‐facing customer services were delivered. A number of value adding services were introduced for the customer. Overall customer satisfaction was improved. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:1 34 Conclusions: The Customer Value Discovery research has created a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. An operational plan was introduced to track activity and performance against the objectives identified in the customer value research. However, there is a constant need to innovate

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF USERS OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS INFORMATION: PROCEDURES AND RESULTS

This survey of 100 economic analysts in agriculture, outside of government and academia, assesses the changing public-private balance in information services in agriculture. Its objectives were to: (1)contact front-line private-sector analysts who handle economic issues in agriculture and ask them about the data and information they most value and why, (2) experiment with measurement instruments to segment and describe information attributes that users value; and (3) assess the interest of front-line analysts in the changing public- private balance in information provision. The results provide a list of information services used by analysts, descriptive responses on attributes that contribute to value-added, and statistical analysis relating respondent characteristics to the use of information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

The Role of Consumer Knowledge of Insurance Benefits in the Demand for Preventative Health

In 1992, the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced new insurance coverage for two preventive services influenza vaccinations and mammograms. Economists typically assume transactions occur with perfect information and foresight. As a test of the value of information, we estimate the effect of consumer knowledge of these benefits on their demand. Treating knowledge as endogenous in a two-part model of demand, we find that consumer knowledge has a substantial positive effect on the use of preventive services. Our findings suggest that strategies to educate the insured Medicare population about coverage of preventive services may have substantial social value.

Healthcare services managers: what information do they need and use?

Objectives: To gain insight into the information behaviour of healthcare services managers as they draw on information while engaged in decision making unrelated to individual patient care. Objectives – The purpose of this research project was to gain insight into the information behaviour of healthcare services managers as they use information while engaged in decision-making unrelated to individual patient care. Methods – This small-scale, exploratory, multiple case study used the critical incident technique in nineteen semi-structured interviews. Responses were analyzed using ‘Framework,’ a matrix-based content analysis system. Results – This paper presents findings related to the internal information that healthcare services managers need and use. Their decisions are influenced by a wide variety of factors. They must often make decisions without all of the information they would prefer to have. Internal information and practical experience set the context for new research-based information, so they are generally considered first. Conclusions – Healthcare services managers support decisions with both facts and value-based information. These results may inform both delivery of health library services delivery and strategic health information management planning. They may also support librarians who extend their skills beyond managing library collections and teaching published information retrieval skills, to managing internal and external information, teaching information literacy, and supporting information sharing

Towards Information Systems Design for Value Webs

In this paper we discuss the alignment between a business model of a value web and the information systems of the participating companies needed to implement the business model. Traditional business-IT alignment approaches\ud focus on one single company, but in a value web we are dealing with various independent businesses. Since a value web is actually a web of services, delivered by IT systems owned by different companies, to ensure alignment we need to\ud specify the services and their properties and then map them on the available IT support in the different companies. Such mappings have to be evaluated in terms of their impact on the profitability of participating in the value web of the different companies. We propose techniques to map services to IT support and show how to do commercial trade-offs