Paper1970
The Market for Lemons
George Akerlof
Asymmetric information can collapse a market entirely, even when mutually beneficial trades exist.
13 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Information Asymmetry
A topic within Microeconomics, itself one of 13 topics in that field and part of Economics.
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The Market for Lemons
George Akerlof · 1970
Asymmetric information can collapse a market entirely, even when mutually beneficial trades exist.
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Job Market Signaling
Michael Spence · 1973
Because employers cannot directly observe worker ability, education can persist as a costly signal of it even when it teaches nothing useful, as long…
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Lecture2002
Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Once markets are modelled with the asymmetric information that actually exists between buyers and sellers, workers and firms, and borrowers and lenders, the competitive equilibrium of standard theory stops being either efficient or a reliable description of how those markets behave.
Nobel Prize lecturelink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Paper1973
Job Market Signaling
Michael Spence
Because employers cannot directly observe worker ability, education can persist as a costly signal of it even when it teaches nothing useful, as long as it is cheaper for able workers to acquire.
22 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper1976
Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information
Michael Rothschild & Joseph E. Stiglitz
When insurers cannot observe an individual's risk, a pooling contract cannot survive competition, so the market settles on separating contracts that force low-risk customers to accept less coverage than they would choose under full information.
24 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced