[open-economics] Open data and consumer surplus

Thu Sep 22 16:33:32 UTC 2011

Hello

Looking at valuations of the economic impact of open government data, one
strand that appears neglected is consumer surplus. Focus tends to be on the
producer side, and the revenues, full-time staff equivalents etc. of
commercial actors. That's a problem, because often open [government] data
enabled applications/services aren't charged for. So product sales revenue
based measurements can't tell the full story.

As we know free does not equal worthless. People do not, generally, use or
develop worthless things. With between 10 and 50 million installs Skype for
Android must have some value for consumers - but would not appear so purely
from app-sales.

Measuring the value of things for which no money changes hands is clearly
difficult. Tools do exist which might be of use though. In particular Discrete
Choice Experiments <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_choice> - which
have been used to value other tricky areas such as health, environment and
transport. Essentially this involves breaking an area down into its
component parts and then asking people to choose between different bundles
of them.  E.g. in transport a £5 ticket for a slow, crowded train, or an £10
ticket for a fast, empty train. Data on respondent choices between many
bundles are then used to value the bundle components.

I was wondering whether to develop survey software to conduct a discrete
choice experiment. Then use it to value some well defined subset of
government data.  E.g. transport timetable info sources.   I was hoping to
get some feedback from the list on:

   - Whether this had been tried before, and its success. If it's worth
   spending time on practically/theoretically.
   - If anyone was interested in pitching in? Either on survey design /
   econometric theory side, coding or respondent motivating.

If we could get survey DCE survey software going it would potentially be of
use to projects like Yourtopia also. Another side product would be evidence
on the elasticity of demand for open data products - which would be very
interesting in itself.

Anyway, I'm matthew-pearce on skype if anyone wants a discussion.

-- 
Matthew Pearce
T: 07835 855 756
@pearce_
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