Taobao Information And Efficiency

As early as in the mid-1940s, the Austria economist Hayek has pointed out, any configuration of the resources was the result of a particular decision-making, and any decisions were based on the given information. Therefore, the fundamental question economic life facing is not the optimal allocation of resources, but how to use the information most effectively. In the mid-1960s, the American economist Paul Samuelson has connect the market effectiveness and information in link. After him, the professor at the University of Chicago Fama had been made such a statement:a market with efficient information will naturally have the optimal efficiency of resource allocation, the validity of market information and effectiveness of the allocation of resources were only the two aspects of a question. Now, information has been seen as the core problem of contemporary economics. Kenneth Arrow, who used to win the Nobel Prize in Economic in2000said, In the past30years, the most important concept in economics is the importance of information, as well as the spreading of information.The information can not be separated without communication technologies. On the influence of communication technologies on human society, the representatives of Canadian media school Inness and McLuhan have had classic statements. Different media technologies has different effect on our social, this effect is manifested in the different areas, such as political, economic, cultural, art and so on. The birth and development of the network technology has brought great changes to our society, this change is also reflected in the socio-economic field. The emergence of e-commerce is the most direct evidence.With the popularity of internet and expansion in China, Internet shopping has become a big boom, more and more consumers choose this kind of quick and convenient way to shop. Taobao as the Chinese Internet shopping army, from its inception in2003, has occupied most of the online business.This article bases on the point of view of Communication, investigates the impact of Internet technology on market efficiency. This study makes an entry from information, trying to analyze the efficiency of Taobao market, reveal the characteristics of this new virtual market information efficiency and find out the difference between Taobao market and the traditional market. With the help of Communication theory and principals of Economics of Information, the study tries to show the influence of Internet technology on market efficiency through information efficiency.Literature method/comparison and case method fire taken in this paper。 The main conclusions are:Compared with the traditional market, Taobao market reduced the degree of information asymmetry in the traditional markets based on the network platform and Internet technology, the information efficiency of the market participants have been greatly improved. This upgrade has a close causal relationship with the Internet technology. But, as what is revealed by Economics of Information, asymmetric information is the norm, absolute symmetry of information does not exist. This is because the causes of asymmetric information still exist in Taobao market. The professional division of labor, the cost of identifying information and other factors, information asymmetry in Taobao market will still produce adverse selection and moral hazard.The Paper brings forth the following two major new study results:(1) This study is established on the Communication studies, Economics and Sociology, it combines Communication studies with Economics.(2) This study riches the area of Communication study and also provides a new research path for e-commerce research.