You are the type of person who probably suffers from a lengthy list of phobias and neuroses. Family and friends seem to be so sure of themselves, so confident, so able to make decisions, it just makes you sick. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time looking for the new strip mall out on the highway trying to buy either any book written by Isaac Asimov or a how-to book on building remote controlled airplanes. Be on the lookout for poorly written technical manuals. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter D, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 713696. Your preferred shopping venue is mail order catalogs. Your special symbol is the question mark (?).

As a Gray Skittery, you are ambivalent, indecisive, and uncertain. You are in a constant struggle between the forces of demand and supply, production and consumption, good and evil... and you're losing the battle. You have trouble making decisions and choosing from among the seemingly infinite number of options that you perpetually face. Your shopping experiences are inevitably confusing.

An inefficient, bad, or adverse outcome of a market exchange that results because buyers and/or sellers make decisions based on asymmetric information. This commonly results in a market that exchanges a lesser quality good, what is termed the market for lemons. Two related problems resulting from asymmetric information are moral hazard and the principal-agent problem. Two methods of lessoning the problem of adverse selection are signalling and screening.

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Upon leaving Scarcity Stan's Bakery Shoppe and Confectionery Palace our pedestrian's excursion drops into Mega-Mart Discount Warehouse Super Center. A quick tour of this mecca of mass production -- lasting no more than three days -- is likely to reveal within the 20 gadzillion square feet of floor space a number of sales racks, shelves, and tables filled with merchandise marked down for clearance. A prominently displayed sign on one sales rack boldly declares that the regular $24.99 price has been drastically reduced, for this week only, to $3.98. What a bargain! What a sale! We have the chance -- "for a limited time only" -- to get stuff valued at $24.99 for only $3.98! With a bargain like this, how can we lose?

It's easy to lose, if you don't understand the concept of value. Most of us have several "bargains" stored away in the attic, closet, or garage that never have seen, and probably never will see, anything resembling use. What seemed like a great "bargain" at the store, does nothing but occupy space at home. (By the way, does anyone have use for a distributor cap for a 1949 Ford?)
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-- Seneca, Roman philosopher

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