I wonder if there's a tipping point in information asymmetry where the theory becomes irrelevant. Sellers will almost always have more information than buyers about a specific instance of a product, but there comes a point in a market where buyers have ENOUGH information to avoid buying a lemon, and so can adjust their offer based on that information and disrupt the feedback loop that drives peach owners out of the market.

As an example, you probably could have done very well for yourself in 2009 buying mortgage-backed securities that didn't include any subprime loans. The securities may have had other problems, but at some point there was enough information available to stop buying the lemon securities for subprime loans and pay a bit more than p.avg for the security if it wasn't backed by subprime loans. Information asymmetry still exists, but there's enough information available to avoid making a catastrophic purchase.

So it's almost like the market for lemons is forced to self-correct, because the quality of the product in the market will necessarily drop until it becomes obvious to the buyers what attributes distinguish between a lemon and a peach.

So maybe the chief lesson in The Market for Lemons is if it looks like a market is all peaches, you shouldn't buy anything at all until you've found a few lemons, and there's money to be made in that market if you can distinguish between peaches and lemons before anyone else.

So is information asymmetry really just a market opportunity for a savvy buyer?