Duty to Provide Information in the Pre-contractual Period from A Law-and-Economics Perspective

Abstract

Under the influence of the market economy, there is a large degree of information asymmetry in the process of negotiating and concluding contracts between the contracting parties. This has imbalanced the interests of both parties in the transaction to a certain extent, as well as seriously affected equality and social justice. This article studies the impact of information exchange, disclosure and transmission in the case of information asymmetry from the perspective of economic efficiency of the transaction on the basis of classification of productive information and functional wealth distribution. Based on this theoretical framework, the article argues that the obligation to provide pre-contractual information is a legal solution to overcome the information asymmetry in the process of negotiating the transaction, and proposes the exception possibility of the duty.