There are 3 basic types of prices: listed, market and street prices. Even though listed prices are often put in the magazine ads or newspaper columns, the consumers, who pay close attention to the market prices, often ignore listed prices. Street prices reflect what a more sophisticated consumer would pay for a product, which implies that a customer has obtained some outside information or acquired additional knowledge about the product or company, which makes it possible for him/her to judge in either direction. "Getting the prices right" was one of the main objectives along the Washington Consensus strategies, outlined for the developing countries as the Import Substitutionalizaion Industrialization seemed to fail by the end of 1970s in addressing such issues as macro-economic stability, balance of payment problems and effectiveness, particularly for Latin American and Caribbean countries. Allocative efficiency (pareto optimal)- is an economic efficiency when referring to the allocation of resources across an economy, which will lead to the increased consumer satisfaction. This requires that there are no alternative allocation of resources in the society that would make one person better off without harming someone else in the society.

Efficient Financial Market - is the market, where prices are adjusted quickly to reflect new information, a type of efficiency sometimes called information efficiency. It is assumed that the markets are information efficient, and even though we know that in reality, information asymmetry does exist with such effects as insider trading and information, it is believed that price do reflect all available information, and the signals they send will not result in an inefficient allocation of resources.