ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the role international organizations (IOs) play in the information market. Private institutions have evolved to reduce information costs: appraisers, brokers, credit agencies, specialized market places, and money itself. The chapter discusses the role of IOs in producing, assembling, and disseminating economic information. The market for information is segmented according to product type and end user. As a consequence, certain information providers are willing to supply historical data at low prices, knowing that academics will be the main customers, whereas the same service incorporating current data, which is demanded mainly by business users, is priced much more expensively. The informational gains can be related to the size of the club by adding the assumption that the "public" information good is a positive function of club size. IOs, in fact, create value by facilitating information exchange among national policymakers.
