Knowledge, Belief and the Economic System

Prices, according to one of the fundamental economic assumptions, contain all the information needed by market participants to make decisions. But this hypothesis does not withstand a reality check – a lot of very necessary information is not passed on in the price system. The prices of stocks immediately before the crash of a stock market bubble say very little about their true worth. For a perfect market system mar-kets for all products and for all points in time are needed. These markets do not always exist and some-times cannot exist – for example markets for products not yet in existence.