7 The Price System: Signals, Speculation, and Prediction

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

Markets Link the World

Markets Link to One Another

Solving the Great Economic Problem

A Price Is a Signal Wrapped Up in an Incentive

Speculation

Signal Watching

Prediction Markets

Takeaway

A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive. That may sound a little abstract, but it’s one of the most fundamental insights in economics. Prices convey important information and they create an incentive to respond to that information in socially useful ways. In this chapter, you’ll see how one market influences another and then how an entire series of markets in a global economy fit together. Prices are the key force integrating markets and motivating entrepreneurs. We will have plenty of examples in this chapter, but keep your eye on the primary theme: The price system creates rich connections between markets and enable societies to mobilize vast amounts of knowledge toward common ends, yet without a central planner.