Signaling Quality Through Prices in an Oligopoly
Abstract
Firms signal high quality through high prices even if the market structure is highly competitive and price competition is severe. In a symmetric Bertrand oligopoly where products may differ only in their quality, production cost is increasing in quality and the quality of each firm's product is private information (not known to consumers or to other firms), we show that there exist fully revealing equilibria in mixed strategies. In such equilibria, low quality firms enjoy market power when other firms are of high quality. High quality firms charge higher prices than low quality firms but lose business to rival firms with higher probability. Some of the revealing equilibria involve high degree of market power (price close to full information monopoly level) while others are more "competitive". Under certain conditions, if the number of firms is large enough, information is revealed in every equilibrium.Download Info
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Paper provided by Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number 0709.Length: 29 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2007
Date of revision: Nov 2008
Handle: RePEc:smu:ecowpa:709
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Department of Economics, P.O. Box 750496, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275-0496
Phone: 214-768-2715
Fax: 214-768-1821
Web page: http://www.smu.edu/economics
Related research
Keywords: Signaling; Quality; Oligopoly; Incomplete Information.;Other versions of this item:
- Janssen, Maarten C.W. & Roy, Santanu, 2010. "Signaling quality through prices in an oligopoly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 192-207, January.
- Maarten C.W. Janssen & Santanu Roy, 2007. "Signaling Quality through Prices in an Oligopoly," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-081/1, Tinbergen Institute.
- L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
- L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
- D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- 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-2007-10-27 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2007-10-27 (Business Economics)
- NEP-COM-2007-10-27 (Industrial Competition)
- NEP-IND-2007-10-27 (Industrial Organization)
- NEP-MIC-2007-10-27 (Microeconomics)
- NEP-MKT-2007-10-27 (Marketing)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2011. "The Simple Analytics of Price Signaling Quality," Cahiers de recherche 11-04, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
- Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2011. "Noisy Signaling in Monopoly," Cahiers de recherche 11-03, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
- Bester, Helmut & Demuth, Juri, 2011. "Signalling rivalry and quality uncertainty in a duopoly," Discussion Papers 2011/20, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
- Dubovik, Andrei & Janssen, Maarten C.W., 2012.
"Oligopolistic competition in price and quality,"
Games and Economic Behavior,
Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 120-138.
- Andrei Dubovik & Maarten C.W. Janssen, 2008. "Oligopolistic Competition in Price and Quality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-068/1, Tinbergen Institute.
- Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2011. "Economic Analysis of Products Liability: Theory," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 1107, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
- Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2008. "The Informational Role of Prices," Cahiers de recherche 08-09, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée, revised Jan 2013.
- Aditi Sengupta, 2010. "Signaling environmental quality to green consumers and the incentive to invest in cleaner technology: Effect of environmental regulation," Departmental Working Papers 1001, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
- Maarten C. W. Janssen & Mariya Teteryanikova, 2012. "Horizontal Product Differentiation: Disclosure and Competition," Vienna Economics Papers 1205, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
- Buehler, B. & Schuett, F., 2012. "Certification and Minimum Quality Standards when Some Consumers are Uninformed," Discussion Paper 2012-040, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
- Aditi Sengupta, 2012. "Competitive Investment in Clean Technology and Uninformed Green Consumers," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2012-08, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
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