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Lemons for Valentine's Day, by Bryan Caplan: "Match Point, yet another Woody Allen movie about adultery, reminds me of a question I've often wondered about: Why hasn't the lemons problem killed adultery? To be more specific, why would any women want to steal a man who lies to, cheats on, and then dumps his wife? This is particularly clear in Match Point - the mistress angrily insists that her boyfriend leave his wife, even though he's shown her in a hundred ways that he's a lying, cheating parasite. In the actual market for used cars, of course, the markets has largely solved the lemons problems using reputation, inspection, and warrantees. You don't want to sell low-quality products if it will ruin your firm's reputation, if they have to pass inspection first, or if a dissatisfied customer can return the product and get his money back. But it's hard to see that mistresses can rely on any of these mechanisms. Few adulterers build up a reputation for standing by their mistresses. Most adulterers wouldn't pass inspection. And I've never heard of an adulterer giving a credible money-back guarantee ('If I don't leave my wife within a year, you get a full year of your life back!'). One solution to this puzzle is to challenge the deny that mistresses want to marry the men they're cheating with. Maybe both are in it for the short-term. But this hardly se"