A Brief Overview of the Economics of Incomplete Markets

This paper was motivated by my participation in the Economic Theory Symposium of the 1988 Australian Economics Congress, Canberra. It represents only one perspective on an immense literature. As the reader will notice, I have often referred to my own work. for two reasons. The first is because it is what I know best, the second is to provide an illustration of the in efficiency resulting from the incentive constraints editors face in contracting for surveys .