What if reliable information is not merely a service, but economic infrastructure?
This page explains the idea in everyday language: find costly mistakes that people could avoid if they had the right information at the right time, then measure whether delivering that information creates more value than it costs.
Working Paper · Pre-Field-Validation DraftImagine losing $10 because you did not know something that would have cost only 10 cents to learn. If that happens repeatedly to millions of people, the information gap itself becomes an economic problem.
Money lost, opportunities missed, and knock-on costs created by the mistake.
The cost of finding, checking, translating, delivering and maintaining useful information.
If delivering information costs less than the economic loss it can prevent, the intervention may be economically productive.
People often do not make expensive decisions because they are careless. Sometimes they simply cannot see the information needed to make a better decision.
“I know how to grow tomatoes. I do not know today's reliable supermarket price, the exact specification, or whether I will actually be paid on time.”
“I know I have gold. I do not know what the formal buyer should pay for its purity, how the assay works, or whether the payment calculation is fair.”
“We have saved money. We do not know which formal financial product accepts our group, what it really costs, or what terms apply.”
“I am working and making sales. I do not know whether my prices cover my real costs or match the wider market.”
The hypothesis asks: Can a trustworthy information system remove enough of these avoidable losses to create measurable prosperity?
Identify a recurring economic loss that could plausibly be changed by better information.
Specify exactly what the person needs: a price, quality requirement, payment term, product comparison, warning, calculation or other actionable fact.
Information that is wrong or stale can be worse than no information. The framework therefore treats verification as a core component.
USSD, SMS, radio, print, web or another appropriate channel can be used. The technology matters, but trust matters too.
Compare the original assumption with observed behaviour, costs and outcomes. The framework is designed to be tested, corrected or rejected.
These are use cases proposed or explored in the working paper. They are not claims that the interventions have already worked in the field.
Market prices, quality specifications, harvest timing, storage information, livestock vaccination and post-harvest-loss reduction.
Gold-price transparency, assay explanations, payment verification and trusted routes into formal buying.
Comparing savings products, understanding fees and interest, avoiding predatory lending and helping informal groups navigate formal finance.
Discovering spare cold-storage capacity and matching small operators with formal facilities.
Cost accounting, market-price information and better pricing decisions for service providers.
Waste recycling, informal mechanics, solar/battery access, compliance, healthcare navigation and employment/TVET matching are among the proposed research areas.
Fewer avoidable underpricing, overpayment, spoilage, missed-market and fee-related losses.
The goal is not to make the decision for someone. It is to give them reliable information before they decide.
People outside formal systems can receive information that helps them understand and navigate those systems.
Knowing the market price, quality standard or contract term can change the information balance in a transaction.
Clear instructions can reduce wasted trips, failed applications, uncertainty and unnecessary intermediaries.
If citizen prosperity increases, broader economic activity may eventually create fiscal benefits. The framework proposes measuring citizen prosperity first.
Information has little value if people do not believe it, cannot understand it, receive it too late, or have no practical way to act on it.
Continuously obtain relevant information from credible sources.
Check it against an independent source of truth.
Turn formal information into something understandable and actionable in the user's context and language.
Use a channel people already access and can trust.
Let users report errors, ask questions and flag changes.
Trust can grow through repeated accurate performance — and one serious error can damage it quickly.
The paper deliberately includes failure modes. Information alone cannot solve every constraint. A useful framework must be capable of discovering failures rather than hiding them.
The strongest contribution is not “information is valuable.” It is a disciplined way to ask how valuable, for whom, at what cost, under what conditions, and can we prove it?
The R ratio gives different information interventions a common measurement language.
Shared sensing, verification, channels and trust infrastructure may become more valuable as more people use them.
Trust-building and trust loss are treated as economic components, not vague social factors.
Validation states, trust weights and failure modes make it harder to mistake a plausible story for evidence.
Measure citizen prosperity first; treat fiscal benefit as a trailing indicator.
The framework is explicitly falsifiable. Field research could show that information does not change behaviour, that R is consistently ≤ 1, or that another constraint matters more.
| Stage | What we know | Evidence standard |
|---|---|---|
| Unvalidated Synthetic | Designer-asserted cases and calculations | Trust weight 0.3 |
| Pilot-Observed | At least one real pilot cycle with observed outcomes | Trust weight 0.6 |
| Field-Validated | Scaled observation against pre-specified tolerances | Trust weight 1.0 |