Background
Armen A. Alchian is an American economist. He is the founder of the "UCLA tradition" in economics, a member of the Chicago school of economics, and one of the more prominent price theorists of the second half of the 20th century. He is the author of pathbreaking articles on information and uncertainty, and the theory of the firm. Through his writings on property rights and transaction costs, he is a founder of the new institutional economics.
Alchian is also widely known as the author with Wiliam Allen of the first year undergraduate textbook "Exchange and Production" which was published in 1964. This was the first American introductory text to discuss information, transaction costs, property rights, and a market economy as a discovery process. It also contains the classic statement of what has come to be known as the Alchian–Allen theorem. This proposition, colloquially known as "ship the good apples out," states that when output varies in quality, the lower quality output is consumed nearby while the higher quality output is shipped long distances. The reason is simple: transportation costs vary with the weight and bulk, but not the quality, of that which is transported. The added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.