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Information revelation in competitive markets
Journal article

Information revelation in competitive markets

Abstract

This paper analyzes a market with multiple sellers and horizontally differentiated products. We investigate the sellers’ incentives to reveal product relevant information that affects the buyer’s private valuation. The main finding is that if the number of sellers is sufficiently large, there is a unique symmetric equilibrium with full information disclosure. Thus, unlike the results by Lewis and Sappington (Int Econ Rev 35:309–327, 1994) and Johnson and Myatt (Am Econ Rev 93:756–784, 2006) for monopoly, which state that the monopolist reveals either full information or no information, intense competition results in a single extreme with respect to information disclosure. We show that the market is always inefficient, but the magnitude of inefficiency converges to zero at a high rate as competition intensifies.

Authors

Ivanov M

Journal

Economic Theory, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 337–365

Publisher

Springer Nature

Publication Date

January 1, 2013

DOI

10.1007/s00199-011-0629-3

ISSN

0938-2259

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