Content area
Full Text
By Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1999. 352 pages, hard cover, $29.95.
Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, two noted economics and information technology academicians at the University of California-Berkeley, have written an instructive book that applies economic and marketing principles to the information economy. Even though long-standing agricultural and industrial-age economic theories may no longer seem to be applicable, the authors take the position that "durable economic principles can guide you in today's frenetic business environment." Additionally, they have captured and presented numerous useful and often amusing examples, affirming the notion "that many aspects of the new economy can be found in the old economy if you look in the right places."
Shapiro and Varian start with a global definition of an information good-anything that can be digitized-and provide readers with a straightforward conceptual frame of reference. They continue by describing, in economic terms, several ubiquitous attributes of information goods, such as that they are costly to produce but cheap to reproduce, and...