Study of Economic Information System and the Supply of Its Services

本研究的目的是（1）设计一个经济信息系统，以促进各个经济主体之间的交易信息交换和分配，从而促进其协调和调整，（2）调查这种系统的经济和政策含义。为此，我们特别关注电子数据交换（EDI）的最新发展，它使企业之间的交易信息化。特别是，我们试图勾勒出一个新的系统called“经济信息系统”，收集交易信息的抽样从电子数据交换传输的消息，从他们产生的电子统计数据，并公布他们的电子。这样一个系统至少在初期必须作为一个公共项目来建造，因为该系统的好处在开始时是很小的，尽管当该系统得到充分发展时，好处会更大。经济信息系统将在微观经济、产业经济、宏观经济和国际经济层面上为个体提供有关其他个体行为和决策的信息;它将减少个体行为的风险和不确定性，减少不平衡和商业波动造成的损害，提高一个国家和整个世界经济活动的效率。另一方面，这样的系统将提供具有公共物品属性的服务;因此，我们考虑一些经济问题，如竞争，垄断，系统的监管。

The objective of this study is (i) to design an economic information system which facilitates exchange and distribution of transaction information among individual economic agents, thereby advancing their coordination and adjustments, and (ii) to investigate economic and policy implications of such a system. To do this, we pay special attention to the recent development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which has been informatizing transactions among business firms. In particular, we attempt to draw an outline of a new system celled "Economic Information System" which collects transaction information by sampling from the messages transmitted on EDI, produces from them electronic statistical data, and publishes them electronically. Such a system would have to be constructed as a public project at least initially, since the benefits from the system would be small in the beginning, although the benefits will be greater when the system is fully developed. The Economic Information System would supply individual agents of the information about the behavior and the decision of other agents at the micro-economic, industrial-, macro-economic-, and international-economic levels ; it will reduce risk and uncertainty to individual agents, decrease the damage from disequilibrium and business fluctuations, and increase the efficiency of the economic activities of a nation and the world as a whole. On the other hand, such a system would provide services which have the property of public goods ; we therefore consider some of the economic issues like competition, monopoly, regulation of the system.