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Teaching Economics

Enrichment

​Market Failure and Akerlof’s Lemons

Simon Wakerley

25th February 2016

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One of the key factors to cause a market to fail is a lack of information.

George Akerlof was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the second hand car market. He observed how asymmetrical information between buyers and sellers affected the market price of second hand cars and with that the number of sales made.

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Simon Wakerley

Sam Wakerley is a teacher of Economics at the British School Al Khubairat. He has led and taught economics for five years initially in Devon, UK and now overseas in the United Arab Emirates.

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