One example was real-estate transactions. The more a customer can learn via the Internet about, say, a property for sale and similar properties, the less likely she is to make bad decisions. That said, there is still a lot of room for improvement. A reader named Sam Bauch describes his encounter with one particular area of information asymmetry in real-estate, and what he’s doing to stop it.
We’ve written quite a bit about various information asymmetries — i.e., when one party in a transaction has a lot more information than another — and how the Internet is very good at correcting that asymmetry. Among the examples we used were the cost of term-life insurance, the price of coffins, and real-estate listings. The Wall Street Journal recently published . . .
This week marks the launch of Covestor, an online investor service that allows other “covestors” to assess and even mimic your investment style. (Hat tip: Matthew Hertz.) Reader Elizabeth Gonzalez alerted us to an interesting consumer trend: high-end furniture and fashion accessories made from recycled trash. Here’s an example. Because nothing says “green” like a purse made from old Firestones. . . .
An editorial in the current British Medical Journal makes a very sharp point that many of us have probably been thinking about in the last few weeks while reading the latest medical news in the papers: It’s easy to feel contempt for deluded practitioners of the past who advocated bloodletting and tonsillectomies for all. Easy, that is, until one considers . . .