Pricing Lemons, Views, and University Housing

Abstract

Prices capture a whale of a lot of information on the scarcity of the resources that go into the production of products and on how much people value various goods. Prices enable buyers to economize on their time. By not having to know much, if anything, about production conditions in various parts of the world or about consumer tastes other than their own, buyers can focus their time and energy on comparing prices and attributes of goods they want to buy that, with as much income as many buyers have these days, is not always an easy problem.