Related papers: Using Information to Amplify Competition

We study how market segmentation affects consumers when a monopolist can adjust both prices and product qualities across segments, engaging in second- and third-degree price discrimination simultaneously. We characterize the…

We study how to optimally segment monopolistic markets with a redistributive objective. We characterize optimal redistributive segmentations and show that they (i) induce the seller to price progressively, i.e., charge richer consumers…

Data regulations increasingly enable consumers to switch among market segments, making segmentation an endogenous outcome of strategic interaction. We study a model in which consumers choose segments before a monopolist sets…

We analyze digital markets where a monopolist platform uses data to match multiproduct sellers with heterogeneous consumers who can purchase both on and off the platform. The platform sells targeted ads to sellers that recommend their…

This paper examines when the public provision of information in search markets improves welfare. I consider a two-sided frictional search market in which buyers match with vertically differentiated sellers. The market is segmented into…

Consumers in many markets are uncertain about firms' qualities and costs, so buy based on both the price and the quality inferred from it. Optimal pricing depends on consumer heterogeneity only when firms with higher quality have higher…

This paper studies optimal mechanisms for collecting and trading data. Consumers benefit from revealing information about their tastes to a service provider because this improves the service. However, the information is also valuable to a…

This paper studies ranking policies in a stylized trial-offer marketplace model, in which a single firm offers products and has consumers with heterogeneous preferences. Consumer trials are influenced by past purchases and the ranking of…

Data buyers compete in a game of incomplete information about which a single data seller owns some payoff-relevant information. The seller faces a joint information- and mechanism-design problem: deciding which information to sell, while…

We model competition on a credence goods market governed by an imperfect label, signaling high quality, as a rank-order tournament between firms. In this market interaction, asymmetric firms jointly and competitively control the aggregate…

This paper investigates third-degree price discrimination under endogenous market segmentation. Segmenting a market requires access to information about consumers, and this information comes with a cost. I explore the trade-offs between the…

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…

We develop a probabilistic consumer choice framework based on information asymmetry between consumers and firms. This framework makes it possible to study market competition of several firms by both quality and price of their products. We…

We study information disclosure in competitive markets with adverse selection. Sellers privately observe product quality, with higher quality entailing higher production costs, while buyers trade at the market-clearing price after observing…

This paper examines how data inputs shape competition among artificial intelligences (AIs) in pricing games. The dataset assigns labels to consumers and divides them into different markets, thereby inducing multimarket contact among AIs. We…

We develop a location analysis spatial model of firms' competition in multi-characteristics space, where consumers' opinions about the firms' products are distributed on multilayered networks. Firms do not compete on price but only on…

We study the costs and benefits of selling data to a competitor. Although selling all consumers' data may decrease total firm profits, there exist other selling mechanisms -- in which only some consumers' data is sold -- that render both…

Machine learning models play a key role for service providers looking to gain market share in consumer markets. However, traditional learning approaches do not take into account the existence of additional providers, who compete with each…

Central to privacy concerns is that firms may use consumer data to price discriminate. A common policy response is that consumers should be given control over which firms access their data and how. Since firms learn about a consumer's…

We consider a monopolistic seller in a market that may be segmented. The surplus of each consumer in a segment depends on the price that the seller optimally charges, which depends on the set of consumers in the segment. We study which…