IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bos/wpaper/wp2011-025.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Simple Market Equilibria with Rationally Inattentive Consumers

Author

Listed:
  • Alisdair McKay

    () (Department of Economics, Boston University)

  • Filip Matejka

    () (Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education, Prague)

Abstract

We study a market with rationally inattentive consumers who are unsure of the terms of the offers made by firms, but can acquire information about the terms at a cost. In a symmetric equilibrium, the price set by firms is continuously increasing in the cost of information for consumers and decreasing in the number of firms operating. In addition, favorable a priori information about a firm leads it to set a higher price, and a new entrant can increase demand for incumbents. When consumers have heterogeneous costs of information, firms selling low-quality products may choose to set the highest prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Alisdair McKay & Filip Matejka, 2011. "Simple Market Equilibria with Rationally Inattentive Consumers," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2011-025, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2011-025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1255-1277, November.
    2. Filip Matêjka & Alisdair McKay, 2015. "Rational Inattention to Discrete Choices: A New Foundation for the Multinomial Logit Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 272-298, January.
    3. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    4. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    5. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    6. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-969, July.
    7. Glenn Ellison & Alexander Wolitzky, 2012. "A search cost model of obfuscation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 417-441, September.
    8. Christopher A. Sims, 2006. "Rational Inattention: Beyond the Linear-Quadratic Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 158-163, May.
    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. Paul Hubert & Giovanni Ricco, 2018. "Imperfect Information in Macroeconomics," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 181-196.
    2. Matějka, Filip, 2015. "Rigid pricing and rationally inattentive consumer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 656-678.
    3. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Behavioral Consumers in Industrial Organization: An Overview," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 247-258, November.
    4. Tamer Boyaci & Yalçin Akçay, 2016. "Pricing when customers have limited attention," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-16-01, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 19 Jan 2017.
    5. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2016. "Competition for Attention," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 481-513.
    6. Andrei Matveenko, 2017. "Logit, CES, and Rational Inattention," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp593, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    7. repec:kap:jculte:v:42:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s10824-017-9308-y is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Vojtech Bartos & Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilova & Filip Matejka, 2013. "Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp499, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    9. Frank Huettner, & Tamer Boyaci, & Yalcin Akcay, 2016. "Consumer choice under limited attention when alternatives have different information costs," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-16-04_R3, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 26 Sep 2018.
    10. Alessandro Pavan, 2014. "Attention, Coordination, and Bounded Recall," Discussion Papers 1576, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    11. repec:eee:gamebe:v:104:y:2017:i:c:p:131-145 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Luo, Yulei & Young, Eric, 2013. "Rational Inattention in Macroeconomics: A Survey," MPRA Paper 54267, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Frank Huettner, & Tamer Boyaci, & Yalcin Akcay, 2016. "Consumer choice under limited attention when options have different information costs," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-16-04, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 04 Oct 2016.
    14. Frank Huettner, & Tamer Boyaci, & Yalcin Akcay, 2016. "Consumer choice under limited attention when alternatives have different information costs," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-16-04_R2, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 28 Feb 2018.
    15. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Failing to Choose the Best Price: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 303-340, November.
    16. Steve, Heinke & Niels, Warmuth, 2016. "A Rational Inattention Perspective on Equilibrium Asset Pricing under Heterogeneous Information with Structural Breaks and Market Efficiency," MPRA Paper 68715, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Mackowiak, Bartosz Adam & Matejka, Filip & Wiederholt, Mirko, 2018. "Survey: Rational Inattention, a Disciplined Behavioral Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 13243, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Mariana Cunha & António Osório & Ricardo Ribeiro, 2016. "Endogenous product design and quality with rationally inattentive consumers," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 03, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    19. Inderst, Roman & Obradovits, Martin, 2015. "Too Much Attention on Low Prices? Loss Leading in a Model of Sales with Salient Thinkers," CEPR Discussion Papers 10813, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    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:bos:wpaper:wp2011-025. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Program Coordinator). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/decbuus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.