The data was also collected by a private institution who has the right to sell if it if they want. I'd love to have a Bloomberg Terminal on my desk, but they are sooooo expensive! The populist rage fermented by Scott Patterson and other journalists is at times quite disgusting.
I mostly agree with you, I guess the University of Michigan is not quite a private institution though.
It's somehow in between public and private; it certainly receives substantial funding and support from the state of Michigan and the federal government. I don't think it's obvious that they should be prevented from gaining financial advantage from research activities (but there are certainly people on both sides of that question).
A prerequisite to a free market is perfect information. Insider information makes markets imperfect, thus losing the sort of holy grail property of getting the "right" price for a good.
>A prerequisite to a free market is perfect information.
So there are no free markets? Perfect information is just a theoretical benchmark used by economists, not something you'll ever encounter in real life.
>Insider information makes markets imperfect, thus losing the sort of holy grail property of getting the "right" price for a good.
What a load of nonsense. Just think for one second about what you wrote: not incorporating information into the price makes it "right"?
Obviously. But the Univ of Michigan data was economic data and not collected from insiders. So it isn't insider trading. It is research. Should we make ALL research available to EVERYONE at EXACTLY the same moment? You can see how ludicrous that sounds when you consider how much research is behind some form of payment.
>Should we make ALL research available to EVERYONE at EXACTLY the same moment? You can see how ludicrous that sounds when you consider how much research is behind some form of payment.
Any gov't entity ought to, when possible, Yes.
For certain, the terms by which these reports are made available ought to be disclosed to all parties. No party should be arbitrarily or "accidentally given" an advantage over any other.
actually yes, that is exactly what should happen if your objective is to have a free market. But most people are not trying to have a free market, they're trying to get paid.
Does it mean that my research (reading about HP 3D printer on hacker news today) should become public the second I make this conclusion? I just told roommate that HP has very interesting and potentially profitable product.
The elite clients paid for access to a conference call 5 minutes ahead of the public announcement of the data.
The super duper elite clients paid for access to an electronic feed that provided the data 2 seconds before that conference call began.