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ONE PARTY TO AN EXCHANGE often knows something relevant to the transaction that the other party does not know. Such asymmetries of information are pervasive in economic activity: for example, in the relationship between employer and employee when the employee's effort cannot be monitored perfectly; between the stockholders and the manager of a firm; between insurer and insured; between a regulated firm and the regulatory agency; between the supplier and the consumers of a public good; between a socialist firm and the central planner; or (as is the subject of this paper) between buyer and seller when the value of the item is uncertain. Forty years ago, FA Hayek criticized theories that purport to describe the price system but start from the assumption that individuals have symmetric information:

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the …