Forced information disclosure and the fallacy of transparency in markets
Abstract
A theory advanced in regulatory hearings holds that market performance will be improved if one side of the market is forced to publicly reveal preferences. For example, wholesale electricity producers claim that retail electricity consumers would pay lower prices if wholesale public utility demand is disclosed to producers. Experimental markets studied here featured decentralized, privately negotiated contracts, typical of the wholesale electricity markets. Two conclusions emerge: (i) such markets generally converge to the competitive equilibrium and (ii) forced disclosure works to the disadvantage of the disclosing side. Information disclosure would result in higher wholesale and thus higher retail electricity pricesDownload Info
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Paper provided by California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences in its series Working Papers with number 1202.Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: Jun 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:clt:sswopa:1202
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Postal: Working Paper Assistant, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 228-77, Caltech, Pasadena CA 91125
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Timothy N. Cason & Charles R. Plott, 2005. "Forced Information Disclosure and the Fallacy of Transparency in Markets," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(4), pages 699-714, October.
- L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
- L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
- D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2005-07-25 (All new papers)
- NEP-COM-2005-07-25 (Industrial Competition)
- NEP-EXP-2005-07-25 (Experimental Economics)
- NEP-REG-2005-07-25 (Regulation)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Bart Wilson & Arthur Zillante, 2010. "More Information, More Ripoffs: Experiments with Public and Private Information in Markets with Asymmetric Information," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 1-16, February.
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