, Columnist
If We Knew What Things Cost, They Might Cost Less
The lack of price transparency for infrastructure, health care and money management helps explain why they're so expensive.
Don't get suckered.
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The U.S. is a place where the big things -- health care, infrastructure and asset management to name a few -- just cost too much. Price transparency is an underrated tool for bringing down those costs.
In economics classes, we teach something called the law of one price -- the cost of the same good or service shouldn’t be much different for different buyers. In some markets, that law holds very well -- the differences in the prices different traders pay for a share of Apple Inc. stock at any given time, for example, are tiny.