Editing Dispersed knowledge (section)

==Overview==
Each agent in a market for assets, goods, or services possesses incomplete knowledge as to most of the factors which affect prices in that market. For example, no agent has full information as to other agents' budgets, preferences, resources or technologies, not to mention their plans for the future and numerous other factors which affect prices in those markets.<ref name=hayek1973>
{{cite book |last=Hayek|first=Friedrich |title=Law, Legislation and Liberty |year=1973 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-32086-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w6siEMiphFwC&q=law+legislation+and+liberty |pages=11–16, 42, 51}}</ref>

Market prices are the result of [[price discovery]], in which each agent participating in the market makes use of its current knowledge and plans to decide on the prices and quantities at which it chooses to transact. The resulting prices and quantities of transactions may be said to reflect the current state of knowledge of the agents currently in the market, even though no single agent commands information as to the entire set of such knowledge.<ref name="Menger">{{cite book|last1 = Menger|first1 = Carl|title = Problems of Economics and Sociology|url = https://archive.org/details/problemsofeconom0000meng|url-access = registration|year = 1963|publisher = University of Illinois Press|last2 = Louis|first2 = Schneider}}</ref>

Some economists believe that market transactions provide the basis for a society to benefit from the knowledge that is dispersed among its constituent agents. For example, in his ''Principles of Political Economy'', [[John Stuart Mill]] states that one of the justifications for a [[laissez faire]] government policy is his belief that self-interested individuals throughout the economy, acting independently, can make better use of dispersed knowledge than could the best possible government agency.<ref name="Mill">{{cite book|last = Mill|first = John Stuart|title = Principles of Political Economy|year = 1909|url = http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30107/30107-h/30107-h.html|publisher = Longmans, Green and Co|location = London|edition = 7th|editor-last = Ashley|editor-first = William James}}</ref>
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