Information in Economic Theory: A Database-like Characterization

We present a discussion of the concept of information in Economics. We begin by presenting the prevalent model, closely associated with the Maximization of Expected Utility hypothesis. While it has proved to be useful in many ways, it also exhibits many shortcomings, which we illustrate with some examples. On the other hand the evidence ac-cumulated by Experimental Economics shows that the actual behavior of economic agents does not necessarily respond to the traditional char-acterization that stems from von Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1943) work. We present, instead, the idea of information as represented by a modular, updatable and linguistic structure. We draw from Computer Science the concept of ‘database ’ as an adequate structure with those features. Logics provides a way of characterizing the selection of an appropriate database up from real world data and underlying con-straints. These constraints do actually configure the information held by an agent. Anomalies in rational behavior as well as non-Bayesian information updates can be modeled by means of this approach, although its full development is still ahead.