Related papers: Uncertain Product Availability in Search Markets
The existing studies on consumer search agree that consumers are worse-off when they do not observe sellers' production marginal cost than when they do. In this paper we challenge this conclusion. Employing a canonical model of simultaneous…
We modify the standard model of price competition with horizontally differentiated products, imperfect information, and search frictions by allowing consumers to flexibly acquire information about a product's match value during their…
This work addresses the buyer's inspection paradox for information markets. The paradox is that buyers need to access information to determine its value, while sellers need to limit access to prevent theft. To study this, we introduce an…
We study a competitive electricity market equilibrium with two trading stages, day-ahead and real-time. The welfare of each market agent is exposed to uncertainty (here from renewable energy production), while agent information on 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…
Motivated by agentic markets -- two-sided markets in which consumers and businesses are assisted by AI tools that facilitate consumers' search -- we study the impact of improved search technology on learning and welfare in markets. We put…
This paper examines competitive information disclosure in search markets with a mix of savvy consumers, who search costlessly, and inexperienced consumers, who face positive search costs. Savvy consumers incentivize truthful disclosure;…
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 explore a model of duopolistic competition in which consumers learn about the fit of each competitor's product. In equilibrium, consumers comparison shop: they learn only about the relative values of the products. When information is…
We study the ramifications of increased commitment power for information provision in an oligopolistic market with search frictions. Although prices are posted and, therefore, guide search, if firms cannot commit to information provision…
When introducing a novel product, a seller sets a price and decides how much information to provide to a buyer, who may incur a search cost to discover an outside option. The buyer knows the outside option distribution; the seller knows…
Second-hand markets have expanded rapidly with the growth of online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platforms. A key feature of C2C markets is that sellers are typically non-professionals and often face uncertainty about the quality of the goods…
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…
When human agents come together to make decisions, it is often the case that one human agent has more information than the other. This phenomenon is called information asymmetry and this distorts the market. Often if one human agent intends…
Machine learning (ML) model trading, known for its role in protecting data privacy, faces a major challenge: information asymmetry. This issue can lead to model deception, a problem that current literature has not fully solved, where the…
An asymmetric information model is introduced for the situation in which there is a small agent who is more susceptible to the flow of information in the market than the general market participant, and who tries to implement strategies…
Matching markets are of particular interest in computer science and economics literature as they are often used to model real-world phenomena where we aim to equitably distribute a limited amount of resources to multiple agents and…
How does competition in markets for information affect the creation and division of surplus? We study this question in a search environment in which an agent searches sequentially for a high-quality good and learns about the quality of…
Consumers can acquire information through their own search efforts or through their social network. Information diffusion via word-of-mouth communication leads to some consumers free-riding on their "friends" and less information…
The paper explores a consumer search setting where the sellers have asymmetries. The model is an extension of the popular Stahl Model, which is widely used in the literature. The extension introduces sellers with heterogeneous stores…