Information serves not only as an input into decision-making, but is a source of pleasure and pain in its own right. This has diverse consequences for human decision-making. In 1961, economist and Nobel Laureate George Stigler (1) initiated the "economics of information" when he relaxed an assumption that had dominated economics until that point. Rather than assume that people are fully knowledgeable of relevant information when it comes to making a decision, he allowed for the possibility that people might lack information and be motivated to acquire it. As Stigler noted when he accepted the 1982 Nobel Prize, "The proposal to study the economics of information was promptly and widely accepted, and without even a respectable minimum of controversy.Within a decade and a half, the literature had become so extensive and the theorists working in the field so prominent, that the subject was given a separate classification in the Index of Economic Articles." Stigler acknowledged that "The absence of controversy certainly was no tribute to the definitiveness of my exposition." Rather, "All I had done was to open a door to a room that contained many fascinating and important problems" (2).
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