IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hastef/0551.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prices and quality signals

Author

Listed:
  • Voorneveld, Mark

    (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)

  • Weibull, Jörgen W.

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

We consider a market-for-lemons model where the seller is a price setter, and, in addition to observing the price, the buyer receives a private noisy signal of the product's quality, such as when a prospective buyer looks at a car or house for sale, or when an employer interviews a job candidate. Sufficient conditions are given for the existence of perfect Bayesian equilibria, and we analyze equilibrium prices, trading probabilities and gains of trade. In particular, we identify separating equilibria with partial and full adverse selection as well as pooling equilibria. We also study the role of the buyer's signal precision, from being completely uninformative (as in standard adverse-selection models) to being completely informative (as under symmetric information). The robustness of results for these two boundary cases is analyzed, and comparisons are made with established models of monopoly and perfect competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Voorneveld, Mark & Weibull, Jörgen W., 2004. "Prices and quality signals," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 551, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 06 Jul 2004.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0551
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0551.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kreps, David M & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Sequential Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 863-894, July.
    2. Edward E. Schlee, 1996. "The Value of Information About Product Quality," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 803-815, Winter.
    3. Riley, John G, 1979. "Informational Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 331-359, March.
    4. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    5. Jacobsen, Hans Jorgen & Jensen, Mogens & Sloth, Birgitte, 2001. "Evolutionary Learning in Signalling Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 34-63, January.
    6. Bagwell, Kyle & Riordan, Michael H, 1991. "High and Declining Prices Signal Product Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 224-239, March.
    7. Hellwig, Martin, 1987. "Some recent developments in the theory of competition in markets with adverse selection ," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 319-325.
    8. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    9. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    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. Silvia Martínez-Gorricho, 2012. "Beneficial consumer fraud," Working Papers. Serie AD 2012-13, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).

    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. Dionne, G. & Doherty, N., 1991. "Adverse Selection In Insurance Markets: A Selective Survey," Cahiers de recherche 9105, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    2. Mahenc, Philippe & Meunier, Valérie, 2006. "Early Sales of Bordeaux grands crus," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 57-74, April.
    3. Dosis, Anastasios, 2018. "On signalling and screening in markets with asymmetric information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 140-149.
    4. Soudipta Chakraborty & Robert Swinney, 2021. "Signaling to the Crowd: Private Quality Information and Rewards-Based Crowdfunding," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 155-169, 1-2.
    5. Anastasios Dosis, 2016. "An Efficient Mechanism for Competitive Markets with Adverse Selection," Working Papers hal-01282772, HAL.
    6. Wei Zhang, 2014. "Job Market Signalling With Two Dimensions Of Private Information," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 113-132, April.
    7. Mailath, George J. & Nöldeke, Georg, 2006. "Extreme Adverse Selection, Competitive Pricing, and Market Breakdown," Working papers 2006/09, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    8. Zhang, Juan & Huang, Jian, 2020. "Deceptive advertising in a crowdfunding market," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    9. Amin Sayedi & Jeffrey D. Shulman, 2017. "Strategic compliments in sales," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 57-84, March.
    10. Keith Krehbiel, 2004. "Legislative Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 113-128, Winter.
    11. Philippe Mahenc, 2017. "Honest versus Misleading Certification," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 454-483, June.
    12. J.-C. Bureau & E. Gozlan & S. Marette, 1999. "Quality signaling and international trade in food products," THEMA Working Papers 99-13, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    13. Feng, Hong & Fu, Qiang & Zhang, Lan, 2020. "How to Launch a New Durable Good: A Signaling Rationale for Hunger Marketing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    14. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and game theory. A 70th anniversary," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-7.
    15. Mark Voorneveld & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2011. "A Scent of Lemon—Seller Meets Buyer with a Noisy Quality Observation," Games, MDPI, vol. 2(1), pages 1-24, March.
    16. Farhad Sadeh & Manish Kacker, 2018. "Quality signaling through ex-ante voluntary information disclosure in entrepreneurial networks: evidence from franchising," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 729-748, April.
    17. Ania, Ana B. & Troger, Thomas & Wambach, Achim, 2002. "An evolutionary analysis of insurance markets with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 153-184, August.
    18. MAHENC Philippe, 2006. "Lemons are Green: The Informative Role of a Pigovian Tax," LERNA Working Papers 06.05.198, LERNA, University of Toulouse.
    19. Kyle Bagwell, 1992. "Pricing To Signal Product Line Quality," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 151-174, March.
    20. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2009. "Price signaling and the strategic benefits of price rigidities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 335-350, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    lemons; noisy quality signal; adverse selection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:hastef:0551. 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: Helena Lundin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erhhsse.html .

    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.