IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revind/v44y2014i2p161-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A More General Framework to Analyze Whether Voluntary Disclosure is Insufficient or Excessive

Author

Listed:
  • Levent Celik

Abstract

I analyze if the excessive quality disclosure finding of the “classical literature” extends to environments in which consumers have a downward-sloping demand. While the answer is affirmative, there are at least two situations under which disclosure is socially insufficient: (1) when there are quality levels that are too low to generate any positive demand; and (2) when the prior beliefs place sufficiently higher weight on lower qualities. In both cases, non-disclosure by the seller leads to a severe reduction in the perceived quality, thereby significantly lowering the demand and the quantity consumed. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Levent Celik, 2014. "A More General Framework to Analyze Whether Voluntary Disclosure is Insufficient or Excessive," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(2), pages 161-178, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:44:y:2014:i:2:p:161-178
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-013-9409-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11151-013-9409-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11151-013-9409-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    2. Insuk Cheong & Jeong‐Yoo Kim, 2004. "Costly Information Disclosure in Oligopoly," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 121-132, March.
    3. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2008. "Communicating quality: a unified model of disclosure and signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 973-989, December.
    4. Paul Milgrom & John Roberts, 1986. "Relying on the Information of Interested Parties," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 18-32, Spring.
    5. Boyan Jovanovic, 1982. "Truthful Disclosure of Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 36-44, Spring.
    6. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    7. Dye, Ra, 1985. "Disclosure Of Nonproprietary Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 123-145.
    8. David Dranove & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2010. "Quality Disclosure and Certification: Theory and Practice," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 935-963, December.
    9. H.S. Shin, 1994. "News Management and the Value of Firms," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 58-71, Spring.
    10. Steven Matthews & Andrew Postlewaite, 1985. "Quality Testing and Disclosure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 328-340, Autumn.
    11. Grossman, S J & Hart, O D, 1980. "Disclosure Laws and Takeover Bids," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(2), pages 323-334, May.
    12. Oliver Board, 2009. "Competition And Disclosure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 197-213, March.
    13. Michael J. Fishman & Kathleen M. Hagerty, 1990. "The Optimal Amount of Discretion to Allow in Disclosure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 427-444.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Levent Celik, 2014. "Information Unraveling Revisited: Disclosure of Horizontal Attributes," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 113-136, March.
    2. Andrew Rhodes & Chris M. Wilson, 2018. "False advertising," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 49(2), pages 348-369, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Levent Celik, 2014. "Information Unraveling Revisited: Disclosure of Horizontal Attributes," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 113-136, March.
    2. Jeremy Bertomeu & Davide Cianciaruso, 2018. "Verifiable disclosure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 1011-1044, June.
    3. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    4. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.
    5. Arnaud Dellis & Mandar Oak, 2020. "Subpoena power and informational lobbying," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 32(2), pages 188-234, April.
    6. Tom Lane & Minghai Zhou, 2022. "Failure of unravelling theory? A natural field experiment on voluntary quality disclosure," Discussion Papers 2022-17, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    7. Panos Markopoulos & Kartik Hosanagar, 2013. "A Model of Product Design and Information Disclosure Investments," Working Papers 13-25, NET Institute.
    8. Xinyu Li & Ronald Peeters, 2017. "Rivalry information acquisition and disclosure," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 610-623, September.
    9. Panos M. Markopoulos & Kartik Hosanagar, 2018. "A Model of Product Design and Information Disclosure Investments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(2), pages 739-759, February.
    10. Dahm, Matthias & González, Paula & Porteiro, Nicolás, 2018. "The enforcement of mandatory disclosure rules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 21-32.
    11. Mathis, Jérôme, 2008. "Full revelation of information in Sender-Receiver games of persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 571-584, November.
    12. Agostino Manduchi, 2013. "Non-neutral information costs with match-value uncertainty," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 1-25, May.
    13. Paul Milgrom, 2008. "What the Seller Won't Tell You: Persuasion and Disclosure in Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 115-131, Spring.
    14. Bond, Philip & Zeng, Yao, 2022. "Silence is safest: Information disclosure when the audience’s preferences are uncertain," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 178-193.
    15. Ginger Zhe Jin & Michael Luca & Daniel Martin, 2021. "Is No News (Perceived As) Bad News? An Experimental Investigation of Information Disclosure," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 141-173, May.
    16. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo, 2013. "Disclosure of information in matching markets with non-transferable utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 143-156.
    17. Huan Cao & Xu Guan & Tijun Fan & Li Zhou, 2020. "The Acquisition of Quality Information in a Supply Chain with Voluntary vs. Mandatory Disclosure," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(3), pages 595-616, March.
    18. Ganesh Iyer & Shubhranshu Singh, 2022. "Persuasion Contest: Disclosing Own and Rival Information," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(4), pages 682-709, July.
    19. Harbaugh, Richmond & To, Theodore, 2020. "False modesty: When disclosing good news looks bad," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 43-55.
    20. Liang Guo, 2020. "Upstream Exploitation and Strategic Disclosure," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(5), pages 923-938, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monopoly; Quality uncertainty; Verifiable information disclosure; D82; D83; L12; L15;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:44:y:2014:i:2:p:161-178. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.