I NFORMATION, its generation, communication, and implementation has become the lifeblood of the highly-refined, market-oriented economy in which we live. The intelligence-generating sector has become the source through which that information is generated, evaluated, and communicated to a market of final users. Information, in this sense, is a commodity, subject to supply and demand conditions like any other commodity. The forces affecting these conditions are open to analytical effort as with any economic phenomenon. The focus of this paper is toward examining one particular part of the demand side of that market--public policymakers--and their particular needs for information.Given ah economy where information production and distribution was organized through an open market, a price system would pass signals between the suppliers of information and those demanding information. These signals would indicate, with varying degrees of accuracy, the amounts and types of information desired by different categories of users.Under a system where these activities are generally organized and supported by the public sector, the quantity and nature of information supplied respond to nonprice indicators, often with considerable lag to changes in informational requirements. The lags show up in various forros: there is, for example, a strong tendency for the informational system to concentrate on known problems, rather than to anticipate potential problems. This arises because the system operates in an environment where the cost of misjudgment, in terms of future effectiveness, may be quite high. Consequently, the system tends to focus on past problems. There is, under these conditions, a continuous flow of information explaining past events. Where history repeats itself, that is, where economic cycles exist, LEO V. MAYER /8 Senior Specialist ]or Food and Agriculture, Congressional Research Service,
