As pointed out by a number of scholars, in a world of dispersed information, the equilibrium price will itself in general be a source of information to participants, since it incorporates whatever information other participants have. Grossman and Stiglitz examine the implication for the case where information can be acquired at a cost. If there is an equilibrium, some will choose to get informed and others not; the two courses of action must be indifferent. (Very special assumptions are made about the risk aversion characteristics of the population and about its heterogeneity.) In particular, if some individuals can acquire perfect information at a finite cost, then no equilibrium exists, since, if information is acquired by some, it will be reflected in the price and so can be acquired costlessly by others, while if no one acquires information, it will pay any individual to acquire it