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. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2019. "Optimal Sticky Prices Under Rational Inattention," Credit and Capital Markets, Credit and Capital Markets, vol. 52(4), pages 573-617.
    2. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    3. 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.
    4. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1255-1277, November.
    5. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    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)

    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. Mackowiak, Bartosz Adam & Matejka, Filip & Wiederholt, Mirko, 2020. "Rational Inattention: A Review," CEPR Discussion Papers 15408, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. 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.
    3. Atahan Afsar; José Elías Gallegos; Richard Jaimes; Edgar Silgado Gómez & José Elías Gallegos & Richard Jaimes & Edgar Silgado Gómez, 2020. "Reconciling Empirics and Theory: The Behavioral Hybrid New Keynesian Model," Vniversitas Económica 018560, Universidad Javeriana - Bogotá.
    4. Penghui Yin, 2018. "Optimal Amount of Attention to Capital Income Risk and Heterogeneous Precautionary Saving Behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 7413, CESifo.
    5. Ellison, Martin & Macaulay, Alistair, 2021. "A rational inattention unemployment trap," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    6. Stephanie L. Chan, 2021. "The Social Value of Public Information When Not Everyone is Privately Informed," Working Papers 2021-09-18, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    7. Dasgupta, Kunal & Mondria, Jordi, 2018. "Inattentive importers," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 150-165.
    8. Nicolas de Roos & Vladimir Smirnov, 2020. "Collusion with intertemporal price dispersion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 158-188, March.
    9. Pasten, Ernesto & Schoenle, Raphael, 2016. "Rational inattention, multi-product firms and the neutrality of money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1-16.
    10. Macaulay, Alistair, 2021. "The attention trap: Rational inattention, inequality, and fiscal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Li, Wei & Luo, Yulei & Nie, Jun, 2017. "Elastic attention, risk sharing, and international comovements," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-20.
    14. 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.
    15. Matějka, Filip, 2015. "Rigid pricing and rationally inattentive consumer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 656-678.
    16. 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.
    17. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    18. Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy & Oleksandr Talavera & Nam Vu, 2020. "The Flood that Caused a Drought," Discussion Papers 20-14, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    19. Tongkui Yu & Shu-Heng Chen, 2021. "Big Data, Scarce Attention and Decision-Making Quality," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 57(3), pages 827-856, March.
    20. 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.

    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: . General contact details of provider: https://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 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: Program Coordinator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decbuus.html .

    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.