Answer to Question 2:

The market for human capital will not be efficient because it is difficult to publicly disseminate information about people's characters.

True or False?


False. There are two things wrong with this statement. First, market efficiency requires only that all public information be reflected in the asset's price. It does not require either that a lot of information be available or that the information be accurate. Second, the market for human capital is essentially non-existent in any case. There is no market price to reflect existing information, although the wage rate will reflect available information about the competence of the individual.

The essence of the principle of efficient markets is the proposition that people do not ignore information in making their decisions about what assets to hold in their portfolios. By doing so, they would be deliberately making themselves worse off. If information is imperfect, which it usually is, people will make their "best" judgment in making decisions given what they know.

It should be kept in mind here that the market for certain types of human capital does function under some circumstances. For example, if a professional hockey player has a good year his team will be able to get more for him in a trade than would otherwise have been the case. The question then would be: Does the market value of that player's rights fully reflect the available information about his future contribution to the profitability of the team that owns him? If there are several teams in the league, each owned independently of the others, the answer is probably yes.

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