Price Dynamics and Consumer Learning
Abstract
This paper studies the price dynamics induced by strategic firm behaviour in the presence of consumer learning about the uncertain quality differential of the products offered by a duopoly. It is found that consumers learn slowly and also that prices converge slowly to full-information levels. A consequence is that the incentives of firms to manipulate consumers’ beliefs are relatively persistent. Although pricing tends to be aggressive at the early stages, and average prices eventually increase over time, price wars may occur at intermediate stages of the product life-cycle.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 1744.Length:
Date of creation: Nov 1997
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1744
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ
Phone: 44 - 20 - 7183 8801
Fax: 44 - 20 - 7183 8820
Order Information:
Email:
Related research
Keywords: Learning; Market Shares; oligopoly pricing;Other versions of this item:
- Ramon Caminal & Xavier Vives, 1999. "Price Dynamics and Consumer Learning," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 95-131, 03.
- D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
- D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search, Learning, and Information
- L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Alexander, Corinne E., 2002. "The Role Of Seed Company Supplied Information In Farmers' Decisions," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19617, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
- Paul Missios & Ida Ferrara, 2010.
"Pricing of Drugs with Heterogeneous Health Insurance Coverage,"
Working Papers
026, Ryerson University, Department of Economics.
- Ferrara, Ida & Missios, Paul, 2012. "Pricing of drugs with heterogeneous health insurance coverage," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 440-456.
- Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2008.
"Thought and Behavior Contagion in Capital Markets,"
MPRA Paper
9142, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2008. "Thought and Behavior Contagion in Capital Markets," MPRA Paper 9164, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- David Hirshleifer & Siew Hong Teoh, 2003.
"Herd Behaviour and Cascading in Capital Markets: a Review and Synthesis,"
European Financial Management,
European Financial Management Association, vol. 9(1), pages 25-66.
- Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2001. "Herd Behavior and Cascading in Capital Markets: A Review and Synthesis," MPRA Paper 5186, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Gill, David & Sgroi, Daniel, 2008. "The Optimal Choice of Pre-launch Reviewer : How Best to Transmit Information using Tests and Conditional Pricing," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 877, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
- Bar Ifrach & Costis Maglaras & Marco Scarsini, 2011.
"Monopoly Pricing in the Presence of Social Learning,"
Working Papers
11-11, NET Institute, revised Nov 2011.
- Bar Ifrach & Costis Maglaras & Marco Scarsini, 2012. "Monopoly Pricing in the Presence of Social Learning," Working Papers 12-01, NET Institute, revised Sep 2012.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1744For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

