报告题目：The Market for “Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism

报告人：闫思思（产业组织与企业组织研究中心硕士研究生）

报告时间：2023年12月15日（周五）10:00-11:30

报告地点：问源阁419室

主办单位：产业组织与企业组织研究中心

【内容摘要】

In this paper, Akerlof examined the used car market and illustrated how the asymmetry of information between the seller and buyer could cause the market to collapse, getting rid of any opportunity for profitable exchange and leaving behind only “lemons”, or poor products with low durability that the buyer purchased without sufficient information. The problem of asymmetrical information arises because buyers and sellers don't have equal amounts of information required to make an informed decision regarding a transaction. The seller or holder of a product or service usually knows its true value or at least knows whether it is above or below average in quality. Potential buyers, however, typically do not have this knowledge, since they are not privy to all the information that the seller has. The basic tenet of the lemons principle is that low-value cars force high-value cars out of the market because of the asymmetrical information available to the buyer and seller of a used car. This is primarily due to the fact that a seller does not know what the true value of a used car is and, therefore, is not willing to pay a premium on the chance that the car might be a lemon. Premium-car sellers are not willing to sell below the premium price so this results in only lemons being sold.

【文章信息】

Akerlof, G. (1970). The Market for “lemmons”: quality uncertainty and the market mechanism. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(3), 488-500.