CAREER: Identifying and Measuring the Economic Value of Information on the Internet

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to contribute to an understanding of the economic impact of new kinds of online information content, measuring their value and helping educate the next generation of business and technology professionals. An important use of the Internet today is in providing a platform for consumers and firms to disseminate information about themselves as well as about products. Indeed, a large amount of information is being generated as online markets also facilitate the creation of online communities and social networks. Much of that textual content has concrete economic value that is often embedded in it. While there are several kinds of information published in online markets, the project will analyze three important and interrelated categories of information: (i) the economic value of textual feedback that is ubiquitous on the Internet such as in reputation systems in electronic markets, product reviews in online communities, and product descriptions in used good markets and social networks, (ii) the economic value of social information such as geographical locations and other self-descriptive information disclosed by users during interactions in digital markets, and (iii) the economic cost of information consumption such as costs of searching and modifying information as well as the costs of processing textual information incurred by consumers. By measuring the "economic value of online textual information," this research will go beyond analyzing the numeric information that has been done in prior work. By producing novel ways of measuring the value of user generated online content, the research activities will make actionable recommendations to practitioners to improve the design of feedback systems in electronic markets as well as help firms display information efficiently in social shopping networks. This research program can have important implications for the debate on the "digital divide," and underserved communities, because it will offer new insights into how geographical locations affect economic and social behavior. Finally, an explicit understanding of the magnitude of various kinds of costs incurred by users during Internet usage will contribute to policies that lead to greater social and economic benefits for all participants. By drawing on multiple methodologies such as empirical analysis, analytical modeling, statistics, experimental methods and text mining, this project will advance current methodologies for interdisciplinary work. The educational activities will result in a new mentoring program for Undergraduate and Graduate students, a new course development titled "Electronic Markets and Digital Content" at Stern's Undergraduate Business program and a new Ph.D. seminar that will introduce new techniques for measuring economic value of online content. Further, the datasets and educational exercises resulting from this project will be made available to the academic community to further disseminate the planned research and teaching advances.