The theory of information asymmetry refers to that in the market economy activities, all kinds of people have different understandings of relevant information; People with sufficient information are often in a favorable position, while those with poor information are at a disadvantage. The theory of information asymmetry was put forward by three American economists-joseph stiglitz, george akerlof and Michael Spencer. The theory holds that: the seller in the market knows all kinds of information about goods better than the buyer; The party with more information can benefit from the market by transmitting reliable information to the party with less information; One of the buyers and sellers with less information will try to get information from the other; Market signal display can make up for the problem of information asymmetry to some extent; Information asymmetry is the disadvantage of market economy. In order to reduce the harm of information asymmetry to the economy, the government should play a powerful role in the market system. This theory provides explanations for many market phenomena such as the rise and fall of the stock market, employment and unemployment, credit rationing, commodity promotion, commodity market occupation, etc. It has become the core of modern information economics and has been widely used in various fields from traditional agricultural products market to modern financial market. Hayek divided knowledge into two categories in the article "The Use of Knowledge in Society": one is scientific knowledge, that is, organized knowledge, which is mastered by experts and can be obtained from theories and books; One is the knowledge of a specific time and place, which is owned by people at that time and place. Here, Hayek's knowledge is actually information, so as far as economic information is concerned, we can also divide them into two categories.

Different kinds of information have different positions and functions in the economic system. As information, economic theory is a summary of the regularity in economic phenomena, a general trend or state, and is often used to describe macroeconomics and microeconomics abstractly. The knowledge of specific time and place is unique information that everyone can use, and it is the root of information asymmetry. Only when each individual makes decisions based on this information, or actively participates in decision-making, can this information be used.

However, in various economic management, these two kinds of information are often confused. Sometimes the economic theory is regarded as the knowledge in a specific time and place, and sometimes the knowledge in a specific time and place is regarded as the economic theory, which leads to the mismatch of social resources and even affects the efficiency of economic operation. This situation exists in both the management of the macro-economic system by the state and the management of the micro-economic system by enterprises.

Hayek listed the important role of knowledge in a specific time and place in his article: for example, a person who makes a living by transporting goods in the air or in the air of an uncertain futures ship, or a real estate agent whose knowledge almost lies in knowing an instant opportunity, or an arbitrage person who benefits from the price difference of goods in different places, all of whom play a major role in society with their special understanding of fleeting and unknown situations. It is also pointed out that in economic management, these important information are easily ignored by managers, causing losses or increasing transaction costs. It is a dangerous tendency for managers to indulge in implementing policies with statistical data and ignore the small changes that are constantly taking place in the economic system. Because the task of keeping costs from rising in any competitive industry requires unremitting efforts, this task alone will consume a lot of energy. Although the statistical total shows greater stability than the movement of specific details, the relative stability of this kind of statistics cannot be explained by the law of large numbers, that is, the mutual compensation of random changes, as statisticians often want to do.

Information confusion in centralized procurement activities. Compared with decentralized procurement, centralized procurement based on redistribution can not save money as managers think, and sometimes it wastes resources. Here is a real example: in order to save money, a provincial branch of a bank has made centralized purchases of accounting vouchers and various registers under its jurisdiction. First, the second-tier branches report the vouchers for one year and register the consumption, and then the provincial banks make statistics, and then invite public bidding for production, which will be distributed to the second-tier branches by the printing house. According to statistics, it saves a lot of money, so this form will be encouraged by managers to implement it again. People can get the advantage of transaction price by gathering scattered transactions together and completing them at one time. This is a conclusion based on scientific knowledge, that is, the theory of economies of scale in economics, and we cannot deny its correctness. But after careful investigation and analysis, the facts are not as true as statistics, and many things that happened at a specific time and place have changed all this. First, there was a problem reporting usage types and quantities. There is no historical data, so we can only rely on subjective guesses. The key is not to pay for it yourself. Therefore, in line with the principle of "more is better than less, no shortage", many unnecessary vouchers and registers have also been submitted, but a lot of them have been submitted. At present, a large number of rarely used vouchers and registers are piled up in the warehouses of various banks. Second, there are problems in use. Printing houses can't supply them in time when they need them, which affects the development of their business. Some banks can't provide business charge vouchers, and they don't charge if they don't send them to me after several calls. Three, the printing factory did not print as required, and printed the triplicate into two copies. Every time a customer fills in triplicate, it will inevitably occupy one of the two copies, which is not only unsatisfactory, but also wastes one copy, that is to say, one copy can only be used in half. In addition, many registers are designed to be very large. Originally, 30 lines could be printed on one page, but 20 lines were printed, which wasted a lot of space. I think the printing house knows best. The losses caused by the above situation are estimated to be beyond the cost saved by centralized procurement. I didn't think of it at the beginning of centralized procurement, just because the manager confused the role of expert information with the information at a specific time and place. Almost all transactions are completed by information at a specific time and place, so it is often wrong to replace the knowledge at a specific time with expert knowledge. Economists have systematic knowledge of economics, but it is not necessarily the best to do arbitrage trading in the stock market, because stock speculation is completed by information at a specific time.

Spencer-Morris condition confuses different kinds of information. Michael Spencer studied the signal transmission in the labor market, and put forward Spencer-Morris condition, which linked people's ability and education, and concluded that education can show a person's ability. He believes that a strong individual can get a diploma at a lower cost, while a weak individual can get a diploma at a higher cost.

The direct consequence of this theory is that all units now require highly educated personnel in recruitment, forming a blind pursuit of highly educated personnel. Encouraged by this system, people pursue higher education at all costs, which greatly stimulates the supply of education, and various forms of educational institutions have sprung up. Educated people can create more social value than uneducated people, and education level is directly proportional to ability, which is a universal law, just as large-scale procurement can reduce unit cost. However, according to Hayek's classification of information, the information provided by education is scientific knowledge and summarized information, and the ability in practical work is mainly reflected in the ability to grasp and process information at a specific time and place. Confusing the ability to master educational information with the ability to master specific time information will also cause problems in concrete practice. For example, in reality, repetition and purchase can also enable people with different abilities to obtain the same academic qualifications. In addition, students' efforts in school are different, and there are many mixed people. Students with bachelor's degrees have different abilities in different schools. The tendency of only academic qualifications and the phenomenon of false academic qualifications and diplomas. As an indicator of education level, academic qualifications show individual ability, which is the result of institutional choice in most cases, not the result of free market choice. In the modern economic system, information has become an important economic resource, and it has become a necessary means of production as well as capital and land, and has been brought into the national economic accounting as an industry. Under the previous economic system, the proportion of information industry was very small, which was basically provided by the state as a state organ. Its cost is included in the national budget, and its income is counted as the progress of social civilization, so it is not included in the usual national economic accounting. However, as a resource, information has been playing a role in the distribution of social wealth, which runs through the whole history of human society.

According to Hayek's classification of knowledge, knowledge is divided into scientific knowledge and knowledge at a specific time and place. Let me analyze the distribution of these two kinds of knowledge. As a social resource, scientific knowledge has been monopolized and rationed by the state for a long time, and the allocation of resources is inefficient. Education is the main tool to spread scientific knowledge. Education is rationed by the state, which shows that the state monopolizes and grasps information distribution tools such as schools. It is not difficult to draw the above conclusions by examining the educational history of various countries. The monopoly of scientific knowledge restricts the supply of scientific knowledge and information, so that most members of society have no chance to receive education, and education has become the patent of a few upper classes. The supply of information resources has been seriously insufficient relative to the demand, which has hindered the civilized process of human society to a great extent. Historically, ignorance caused by people's lack of scientific knowledge has cost society too much. Now China has liberalized private education, which has alleviated the contradiction between supply and demand of scientific knowledge to some extent. Information, like electricity and transportation, plays an important and fundamental role in the development of national economy. However, the state-led information dissemination, that is, the allocation efficiency of information resources is very low, which has become the bottleneck of social and economic development. Therefore, the socialization and marketization of information resource allocation will be an inevitable trend. The same is true for publishing information at a specific time and place. Media can be regarded as the main tool to distribute information at a specific time and place, such as radio, telecommunications, newspapers, etc. The government-run media also has the problem of inefficient allocation of information resources, which is mainly manifested in the non-market operation of information allocation and the non-commercialization of information, which can not meet the information needs of economic activities. Under the condition of market economy, economic activities demand more and more information at a specific time and place. It will be an inevitable trend to release the restrictions on the subject of information resources allocation, allow private capital to operate the media, establish an information dissemination mechanism dominated by market individuals, and allocate social information resources according to the laws of market economy.

The information distribution determines the information asymmetry, which is one of the main sources of information asymmetry. Most of the existing information asymmetry is the result of institutional choice rather than the reason of institutional choice, so the solution to information asymmetry should first focus on the information distribution system. The information industry can be divided into education, scientific research and cultural industries that allocate scientific knowledge, and broadcasting, telecommunications and media (including the Internet) industries that allocate information at a specific time and place. It can also be divided into tool industry of information resources allocation and content industry of information resources. Together, they constitute an economic system for allocating information resources. The significance of information economics lies in studying the efficiency of this system and how to improve the efficiency to make it optimal. Like other social wealth, information resources are scarce resources. Priority possession of information resources will also bring related wealth. When some information resources are monopolized, the corresponding interests will also be monopolized. Patent right is a monopoly of information resources. The monopoly position of Intel's chips, a scientific and technological resource, makes it calmly at the top of the pyramid of electronic computer industry, and its value accounts for nearly half of the whole computer industry chain. When a country's economy plays an important role in the world, its language will also become a scarce resource, such as English. Non-English speaking countries in the world spend a lot of money to master this language every year. Advanced civilization itself is a valuable resource, and backward areas have to spend money to buy it, such as Hollywood movies.

Now people divide the economic system into three parts: logistics, capital flow and information flow. At present, there is little systematic analysis of the relationship and influence of these three blocks in economics, which can also be regarded as a new classification method of social industries and may become the mainstream of social industry research in the future. The current industrial classification divides industries into primary industry, secondary industry and tertiary industry, which has become the main means to study economic system and national economic accounting. The impact of applying the new industrial classification method on economic system, economic resource allocation efficiency and economic policy is very worthy of in-depth study in economics.

Information has spread in a certain way since its formation. We call the tools, contents and methods of information dissemination the economic system of information resource allocation. This economic system can be divided into two parts: one part is to distribute scientific knowledge as systematic information (education, science and culture are the main tools to spread scientific knowledge), and the other part is to distribute information at a specific time and place (radio and television, newspapers and magazines, the Internet and other media are the main tools to spread it). Together, they constitute a relatively independent industry and an economic system of information dissemination.