<p>Wikipedia has often been jokingly described as an idea that &quot;could never work in theory – only in practice.&quot; The fact that Wikipedia seemingly aggregates information so well through voluntary and oftentimes competitive editing with only limited central control makes it sound like it possesses the hallmarks of a system that tends towards Pareto efficiency, where every preference criterion can be improved without impairing any other preference criteria.</p>
<p>Without being able to provide an immediate source, I also reckon reading that competitive markets in particular are highly efficient at aggregating information from all of its participants to arrive at an allocative optimum, whether the market deals in commodities, securities, or even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market" rel="nofollow noreferrer">politics</a>.</p>
<p>So, have any economists ever explored whether Wikipedia can be said to tend towards Pareto efficiency in some regard? I specifically ask on here, since Google keeps pointing me to either Wikipedia or unrelated sites copying and/or talking about Wikipedia. (Adding <code>-site:wikipedia.org</code> or using Google Scholar doesn't really work either.)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-12-27T06:01:04.600Z
Hi! You need to define how you would measure "efficiency" in this context. Also you make some incorrect assumptions: free markets are only good at aggregating some types of information. E.g., markets will fail to determine the value of a public good - such as an online encyclopedia entry.
Giskard
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-12-27T12:29:59.207Z
In market the information is efficiently aggregated in form of price. There is no price you pay per article on wikipedia. I suppose hypothetically if you could bid on individual articles and if there were no issues with non-excludability then the quantity and quality of the content would be optimally determined by people  paying higher prices for better articles
1muflon1
<pareto-efficiency><efficient-markets>
Have there been any studies exploring whether Wikipedia editing/volunteering is Pareto efficient?
Vlad
# Have there been any studies exploring whether Wikipedia editing/volunteering is Pareto efficient?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-12-27)

Wikipedia has often been jokingly described as an idea that "could never work in theory – only in practice." The fact that Wikipedia seemingly aggregates information so well through voluntary and oftentimes competitive editing with only limited central control makes it sound like it possesses the hallmarks of a system that tends towards Pareto efficiency, where every preference criterion can be improved without impairing any other preference criteria.

Without being able to provide an immediate source, I also reckon reading that competitive markets in particular are highly efficient at aggregating information from all of its participants to arrive at an allocative optimum, whether the market deals in commodities, securities, or even [politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market).

So, have any economists ever explored whether Wikipedia can be said to tend towards Pareto efficiency in some regard? I specifically ask on here, since Google keeps pointing me to either Wikipedia or unrelated sites copying and/or talking about Wikipedia. (Adding `-site:wikipedia.org` or using Google Scholar doesn't really work either.)

**Tags:** pareto-efficiency, efficient-markets

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Hi! You need to define how you would measure "efficiency" in this context. Also you make some incorrect assumptions: free markets are only good at aggregating some types of information. E.g., markets will fail to determine the value of a public good - such as an online encyclopedia entry.  
> **username_2**: In market the information is efficiently aggregated in form of price. There is no price you pay per article on wikipedia. I suppose hypothetically if you could bid on individual articles and if there were no issues with non-excludability then the quantity and quality of the content would be optimally determined by people  paying higher prices for better articles  

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## 0 answers

