Emerging Information Technologies and Agricultural Structure

The role of information in firm decision mak-ing has become increasingly conspicuous in microeconomics over the past several years. However, relatively few microeconomic mod-els treat information as an explicit variable (Bullock, Eisgruber, Pasour and Bullock). Exacerbating this situation are few quan-tifiable linkages among various exchange ar-rangements and decision making under uncer-tainty for individual firms. The theoretical foundation for the role of information in markets and marketing has progressed steadily since Stigler's important article which explicity recognized information as a scarce and costly resource to individual firms. Stigler's foundation has been extended over time so that the role of information may be viewed as a general problem of maximizing profits through optimal information search. Important contributions by McCall, Arrow, Wilson, and others have provided search cri-teria for optimality. For example, McCall's work provides optimal stopping rules in the context of job search. This paper focuses on emerging information technologies and their potential structural im-pact on agricultural marketing. A major share of the discussion relates to the producer-first handler level for agricultural commodities. Ini-tial attention is on the nature and relative im-portance of various exchange arrangements and their relationship to private and public information. Next, emerging technologies for both the collection and dissemination of in-formation are assessed. The final portion ad-dresses the potential impact of these tech-nologies on some structural aspects.