Asymetries of information

From The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Page 35.

Akerlof wrote a famous paper on this subject called "The Market for Lemons" - it won him a Nobel Prize. In the paper, he demonstrated that in a market plagued by asymmetries of information, the quality of goods will decrease and the market will come to be dominated by crooked sellers and gullible or desperate buyers.

That would seem to imply a necessary focus on transparency, accountability, and consequences. It would also explain why high trust societies are so productive. Where there is trust in information provided by others (and that trust is borne out), there is far less effort (lost productivity) invested in verification.