IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-720984.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Attraction versus Persuasion: Information Provision in Search Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Pak Hung Au
  • Mark Whitmeyer

Abstract

We consider a model of oligopolistic competition in a market with search frictions, in which competing firms with products of unknown quality advertise how much information a consumer’s visit will glean. In the unique symmetric equilibrium of this game, the countervailing incentives of attraction and persuasion yield a payoff function for each firm that is linear in the firm’s realized effective value. If the expected quality of the products is sufficiently high (or competition is sufficiently fierce), this corresponds to full information: firms provide the first-best level of information. If not, this corresponds to information dispersion: firms randomize over signals.

Suggested Citation

  • Pak Hung Au & Mark Whitmeyer, 2023. "Attraction versus Persuasion: Information Provision in Search Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(1), pages 202-245.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/720984
    DOI: 10.1086/720984
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720984
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720984
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/720984?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. He, Wei & Li, Jiangtao, 2023. "Competitive information disclosure in random search markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 132-153.
    2. Teddy Mekonnen & Zeky Murra-Anton & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, 2023. "Persuaded Search," Papers 2303.13409, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    3. Pak Hung Au & Mark Whitmeyer, 2024. "Attraction Via Prices and Information," Papers 2402.11754, arXiv.org.

    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:10.1086/720984. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.