New paper on Anonymous Lemons

European Financial Managment has just published ‘Symmetrical Ignorance: The Cost of Anonymous Lemons.’

It’s (kind of) a 50^th Anniversary ‘inversion’ of Akerlof’s 1970 paper. Usually, increasing the information available to buyers reduces information asymmetry (‘lemons’) problems. But decreasing the information of potential sellers also reduces information asymmetries.

I argue that in finance, rules  to decrease seller information has sustained anonymous markets that lemons problems would not otherwise allow to exist. And the induced ignorance does not necessarily serve the public interest.

The publication is under the broadest creative commons copyright.  So do with it as you will!