Some information is beneficial; it makes people’s lives go better. Some information is harmful; it makes people’s lives go worse. Some information has no welfare effects at all; people neither gain nor lose from it. Under prevailing executive orders, federal agencies must investigate the welfare effects of information by reference to cost-benefit analysis. Federal agencies have (1) claimed that quantification of benefits is essentially impossible; (2) engaged in “breakeven analysis”; (3) projected various endpoints, such as health benefits or purely economic savings; and (4) relied on private willingness to pay for the relevant information. All of these approaches run into serious objections. With respect to (4), people may lack the information that would permit them to make good decisions about how much to pay for (more) information; they may not know the welfare effects of information. Their tastes and values may shift over time, in part as a result of information. These points suggest the need to take the willingness-to-pay criterion with many grains of salt, and to learn more about the actual effects of information, and of the behavioral changes produced by information, on people’s experienced well-being.

中文翻译：

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破坏爆米花？信息的福利效应

一些信息是有益的。它使人们的生活变得更好。一些信息是有害的；它使人们的生活变得更糟。一些信息根本没有任何福利影响。人们既不会因此受益也不会失去。根据现行行政命令，联邦机构必须参考成本效益分析调查信息的福利影响。联邦机构（1）声称，量化收益基本上是不可能的；（2）从事“盈亏平衡分析”；（3）预测各种终点，例如健康收益或纯粹的经济节省；（4）依靠私人支付相关信息的意愿。所有这些方法都遭到严重反对。关于（4），人们可能缺乏信息，无法使他们对支付多少（更多）信息做出正确的决定；他们可能不知道信息的福利影响。他们的品味和价值观可能会随着时间的流逝而变化，部分原因是信息的传播。这些观点表明，有必要采用愿意支付很多盐的支付标准，并且需要更多地了解信息的实际效果以及信息对人的经历带来的行为变化的影响。