Quality Uncertainty in Early Economic Thought

Sylvie Lupton

History of Political Economy, 2015, vol. 47, issue 3, 511-534

Abstract: This article highlights the contributions of early economic thought to quality uncertainty. Both Roman law regarding fraud and medieval thinkers (such as Vacarius, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Astesanus of Asti) scrutinized asymmetric information and shared uncertainty regarding product quality, although not in the same terms as the modern literature. This retrospective analysis will help clarify how early economic thought can enlighten us both on the nature and consequences of quality uncertainty and the mechanisms to address it, and may have even predicted the issues that have been addressed by modern information economics.

Keywords: quality uncertainty; asymmetric information; shared uncertainty; early economic thought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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