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1960
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Jacques H. Drèze, « Le paradoxe de l’information », Économie appliquée (documents), ID : 10.3406/ecoap.1960.3883
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It is often useful , for an understanding of the effects of uncertainly upon decisions, to ask how the situation would be modified if the uncertainly disappeared through the provision of supplementary information. Marshak and others, who have developed a technique for handling this problem by imputing a «value » to such information, have argued that this value can never be negative. The author argues that this conclusion needs to be modified. Supplementary information has a dual incidence upon decisions : it not only permits greater flexibility of action, but also modifies the possible field of action — in particular, information makes it impossible to gamble upon the event with which the information deals, or to negotiate upon the basis of uncertainly about that event. This second aspect of information, it is argued, introduces an opportunity-cost which needs to be taken into account along with the value of information, and the algebraic sum of the two could well be negative.