Market Failure Caused by Imperfect Information

In the earlier discussion of the perfect competition model, we noted the assumption of perfect information of buyers and sellers. Theoretically, this means that buyers and sellers not only know the full array of prices being charged for goods and services, but they also know the production capabilities of sellers and the utility preferences of buyers. As part of that discussion, we noted that this assumption is not fully satisfied in real markets, yet sellers and buyers may have a reasonably complete understanding of market conditions, particularly within the limits of the types of products and geographic areas in which they normally participate.

Imperfect information can be due to ignorance or uncertainty. ...

Get Managerial Economics now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.