Economics
As you read in this chapter about the FTC's role in regulating advertising, think about how the FTC is fulfilling a government function discussed in your economics class: attempting to prevent one kind of market failure. Remember from your economics class that economists assume that markets exist in an almost perfect form. For a market to be perfect, certain conditions have to exist. When those conditions fail to exist, the government might act to correct the failure. For example, economists often assume that buyers must have perfect information about the products they are buying for the market to achieve optimal results. We recognize that sellers would often provide faulty information or conceal information if doing so would help them sell their products. Thus, the FTC, with its regulation of advertising, tries to prevent the problem of imperfect information, thereby improving the functioning of the market.

Source: David C. Colander, Economics, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), pp. 432–434.