IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-699211.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competitive Information Disclosure in Search Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Board
  • Jay Lu

Abstract

Buyers often search across sellers to learn which product best fits their needs. We study how sellers manage these search incentives through their disclosure strategies (e.g., product trials, reviews, and recommendations) and ask how competition affects information provision. If sellers can observe the beliefs of buyers or can coordinate their strategies, then there is an equilibrium in which sellers provide the "monopoly level" of information. In contrast, if buyers' beliefs are private, then there is an equilibrium in which sellers provide full information as search costs vanish. Anonymity and coordination thus play important roles in understanding how advice markets work.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Board & Jay Lu, 2018. "Competitive Information Disclosure in Search Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(5), pages 1965-2010.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/699211
    DOI: 10.1086/699211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/699211
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/699211
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/699211?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. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    2. Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Kim C. Border, 2006. "Infinite Dimensional Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-3-540-29587-7, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Elliot Lipnowski & Doron Ravid, 2020. "Cheap Talk With Transparent Motives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(4), pages 1631-1660, July.
    2. Jay Lu & Simon Board, 2015. "Information Provision and Consumer Search," 2015 Meeting Papers 1427, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Campi, Luciano & Zabaljauregui, Diego, 2020. "Optimal market making under partial information with general intensities," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104612, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Kaido, Hiroaki, 2017. "Asymptotically Efficient Estimation Of Weighted Average Derivatives With An Interval Censored Variable," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(5), pages 1218-1241, October.
    5. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2021. "Entry-Proofness and Discriminatory Pricing under Adverse Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(8), pages 2623-2659, August.
    6. Persson, Petra, 2018. "Attention manipulation and information overload," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 78-106, May.
    7. Askoura, Youcef & Billot, Antoine, 2021. "Social decision for a measure society," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    8. Xiaohong Chen & Andres Santos, 2018. "Overidentification in Regular Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1771-1817, September.
    9. He, Wei & Sun, Yeneng, 2013. "Stationary Markov Perfect Equilibria in Discounted Stochastic Games," MPRA Paper 51274, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Duggan, John, 2011. "General conditions for the existence of maximal elements via the uncovered set," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 755-759.
    11. Eduardo Perez & Delphine Prady, 2012. "Complicating to Persuade?," Working Papers hal-03583827, HAL.
    12. Romain Blanchard & Laurence Carassus & Miklós Rásonyi, 2018. "No-arbitrage and optimal investment with possibly non-concave utilities: a measure theoretical approach," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 88(2), pages 241-281, October.
    13. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    14. Chan, Jimmy & Suen, Wing, 2009. "Media as watchdogs: The role of news media in electoral competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 799-814, October.
    15. René Aïd & Matteo Basei & Giorgia Callegaro & Luciano Campi & Tiziano Vargiolu, 2020. "Nonzero-Sum Stochastic Differential Games with Impulse Controls: A Verification Theorem with Applications," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(1), pages 205-232, February.
    16. He, Wei & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2015. "Equilibrium theory under ambiguity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 86-95.
    17. Light, Bar & Weintraub, Gabriel, 2018. "Mean Field Equilibrium: Uniqueness, Existence, and Comparative Statics," Research Papers 3731, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    18. Massimiliano Amarante & Mario Ghossoub & Edmund Phelps, 2012. "Contracting for Innovation under Knightian Uncertainty," Cahiers de recherche 18-2012, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    19. Jeongwoo Lee & Jaeok Park, 2019. "Preemptive Entry in Sequential Auctions with Participation Cost," Working papers 2019rwp-141, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    20. Sudhir A. Shah, 2016. "The Generalized Arrow-Pratt Coefficient," Working Papers id:10795, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/699211. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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.