The Economics of Information

Synopsis

The second edition of the textbook for the Economics of Information class at the Faculty of Business Administration in Foreign Languages of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. It explains, in plain language, how information shapes markets, firms and the rules of the digital economy, and is meant to be used alongside the lectures rather than in place of them.

The thirteen chapters are arranged in three parts. Part I, How Information Shapes Markets, covers markets and price signals, information asymmetry, the principal-agent problem and game theory. Part II, Technology and the Organisation of Work, covers platforms and the sharing economy, blockchain and smart contracts, robots, RPA and artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing and outsourcing. Part III, The Rules of the Digital Economy, covers intellectual property, big data, privacy and the GDPR, social media and fake news, and the contest between Big Tech and Big Government.

Every chapter opens with learning objectives and closes with a summary, discussion questions, exercises, self-check questions and further reading. Case studies, Romanian examples and twenty redrawn figures illustrate the ideas, and discussions of market failure are paired with concrete examples of government failure. The edition adds a glossary with the Romanian equivalents of key terms, answers to the self-check questions and a full reference list, and is updated to October 2026, including the EU AI Act and the Digital Markets Act.