Simultaneous price changes, information acquisition on common competitors and welfare (original) (raw)

Too Much Information Sharing? Welfare Effects of Sharing Acquired Cost Information in Oligopoly

The Journal of Industrial Economics, 2013

By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists' information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost parameters gives the following trade-off in Cournot oligopoly. On the one hand, it decreases the expected consumer surplus for a given information precision, as the literature shows. On the other hand, information sharing increases the firms' incentives to acquire information, and the consumer surplus increases in the precision of the firms' information. Interestingly, the latter effect may dominate the former effect.

Simultaneous vs. sequential price competition with incomplete information

Economics Letters, 2009

We compare the equilibria that result from sequential and simultaneous moves when two firms compete à la Bertrand in a homogeneous-good market. and firms' unit costs are private information. Alternatively, our setup can be interpreted as a procurement auction with endogenous quantity where the buyer uses a first-price format if moves are simultaneous and she awards one bidder a right of first refusal if moves are sequential. We show that the first mover can be more or less aggressive in the sequential than it would be in a simultaneous game. In addition, in the case of sequential choices there is a second-mover advantage. Finally, we prove that, under some conditions, buyer and total surplus are larger when moves are simultaneous.

Vertical Mergers in a Model of Upstream Monopoly and Incomplete Information

Review of Industrial Organization, 2021

We examine the role of private information on the impact of vertical mergers. A vertical merger can improve the information that is available to an upstream monopolist because, after the merger, the monopolist can observe the cost of its downstream merger partner. In the pre-merger world, because the costs of the downstream firms are private information, the monopolist has incomplete information and cannot implement the monopoly outcome: The expected pre-merger equilibrium price of the downstream product is lower than the monopoly price. After a vertical merger, the equilibrium input price that is charged to the downstream rival can either increase or decrease-depending on whether the downstream merger partner's cost is low or high, respectively. However, in all cases the equilibrium price of the downstream product increases to the monopoly price. Therefore, the merger leads to consumer harm even when it leads to a reduction in the input price. The merged firm, however, cannot extract all of the monopoly profit: The merger causes production inefficiency (when the downstream rival has a relatively small cost advantage) and the downstream rival still earns an information rent (when it has a relatively large cost advantage). These results also have implications for vertical merger policy.

Information Acquisition, Signaling and Learning in Duopoly

SSRN Electronic Journal

We study firms' incentives to acquire private information in a setting where subsequent competition leads to firms' later signaling their private information to rivals. Due to signaling, equilibrium prices are distorted, and so while firms benefit from obtaining more precise private information, the value of information is reduced by the price distortion. Thus, compared with firms that do not attempt to manipulate rivals' beliefs, signaling firms acquire less precise information. An industry-wide trade-association acquiring information increases firm profit and may also increase consumer surplus, so allowing such collective action may be in the interest of regulatory authorities.

Learning in asymmetric duopoly markets: competition in information and market correlation

Spanish Economic Review, 2005

This paper explores experimentation and learning in asymmetric duopoly markets with product differentiation and demand uncertainty. We define the concepts of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity in information and we show how both the mode of information competition and the transmission of information across markets affect duopoly experimentation. We relate information competition with market competition and we find that, when goods are substitutes and the correlation between market shocks is negative, firms will have a higher incentive to experiment in asymmetric markets than in symmetric ones. The opposite result follows when such correlation is positive. Also, when goods are complements the above findings are reversed.

The dual role of equilibrium price in competitive economies with asymmetric information

Ekonomski anali, 2008

This paper analyses equilibrium in competitive markets with asymmetrically informed agents. In contrast to Walrasian equilibrium, where equilibrium price is only an indicator of relative scarcity, in the models studied in this paper equilibrium price has two additional roles. It conveys and aggregates the private information of agents in the economy. Each agent infers the private information of other agents by studying the equilibrium price. This implies that agents in this setting have higher cognitive capabilities than Walrasian agents. The equilibrium concept used to describe these additional roles of equilibrium price is called Rational Expectations Equilibrium (REE).

The Impact of Selling Information on Competition

2000

We consider a homogenous good oligoply with identical consumers who learn about prices either by (sequentially) visiting firms or by consulting a price agency who sells information about which firm charges the lowest price. In the sequential equilibrium with maximal trade and minimal search, prices are dispersed and consumers randomize between consulting a price agency and buying at the first

The Effects of the Asymmetry of Information Intrafirms on Oligopolistic Market Outcomes

We consider an oligopoly with a principal-agent relationship, in which a firm's marginal cost is decreasing in a manager's managerial effort and is subject to an additive uncertainty. Two types of firms operate: one displays symmetric information between the owner and the manager, another presents asymmetric information. We show that if the marginal cost's derivative of the manager is sufficiently small, then the expected effort level in an asymmetric information firm exceeds that in a symmetric one. We also show that the expected total output and consumer surplus may reduce at equilibrium, as the number of symmetric information firms increases.