… is from page 119 of George Stigler‘s 1968 volume, The Organization of Industry; specifically, it’s from Stigler’s important June 1967 Journal of Political Economy article, “Imperfections in the Capital Market“:
There is no “imperfection” in a market possessing incomplete knowledge if it would not be remunerative to acquire (produce) complete knowledge: information costs are the costs of transportation from ignorance to omniscience, and seldom can a trader afford to take the entire trip.
