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2012, American Economic Review
This paper develops a model of industry dynamics where firms compete to acquire customers over time by disseminating information about themselves in the presence of random shocks to their efficiency. The properties of the model's stationary equilibrium are related to empirical regularities on firm and industry dynamics. As an application of the model, the effects of a decline in the cost of information dissemination on firm and industry dynamics are explored. (JEL D11, D83, L11, L81, M37)
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
Journal of Economic Theory, 2015
Market frictions due to asymmetric information have received significant attention at least since the pioneering work of Akerlof and Rothschild and Stiglitz [103] on adverse selection, Spence [105] on signaling, and the work on rational expectations equilibria (REE) by Lucas [78], Radner , and Grossman and Stiglitz . The study of such frictions has had tremendous impact on all fields of economics and finance. Indeed, informational frictions constitute one of the three main sources of market failures, the other two being market power and externalities. Information frictions have been incorporated in market competition models starting from the pioneering work of Lucas in macroeconomics, Grossman and Stiglitz [65] and Kyle [73] in finance, Wilson [130] and Milgrom in auctions, Palfrey and Vives in Cournot markets, and Kyle [74] and more recently Vives in models of competition in schedules. Dynamic models followed with Kyle [73], Vives , Wang [127], He and Wang and Spiegel . Information externalities have also received significant attention (see, e.g., Vives [117,, and Amador and Weill ). Fostered by the contribution of Morris and Shin [87], a fast-growing literature investigates the welfare effects of different information structures in economies with strategic complementarity or substitutability in actions. In particular, Angeletos and Pavan [16] relate the social value of information to possible inefficiencies in the use of information in a family of large economies with quadratic payoffs and Gaussian information that includes as special cases Morris and Shin [87] and the early contribution by Vives , and which stylizes certain business-cycle applications. Another strand of the literature starting with the pioneering work of Carlsson and Van Damme [35], investigates equilibrium selection in (global) coordination games with dispersed information. The applications of this approach, starting with Morris and Shin [86], have been very fruitful * Corresponding author.
Metroeconomica, 2002
In this paper the economies of scale arising from the acquisition of costly information and their implications for the existence of a competitive equilibrium are investigated. As is known, the existence of economies in the scale of production undermines the possibility of a competitive equilibrium. This paper demonstrates that this kind of problem arises when ®rms face market uncertainty, i.e. in competitive markets, uncertainty about the price of production factors or about the price of output. It is shown that, under these circumstances, ®rms have incentives to purchase market information, i.e. information capable of reducing price uncertainty. In turn, the acquisition of costly information generates economies of scale that prevent the occurrence of a competitive equilibrium, unless such increasing returns to scale are tamed by the decreasing utility of uncertain returns due to risk aversion, orÐin the short runÐby increasing marginal costs of production. of economies in the scale of production undermines the possibility of a competitive equilibrium. I demonstrate that this kind of problem arises when ®rms face market uncertainty, i.e. in competitive markets, uncertainty about the price of production factors or about the price of output. It is shown below that, under these circumstances, ®rms have incentives to purchase market information, i.e. information capable of reducing price uncertainty. In turn, the acquisition of costly information generates economies of scale that prevent the occurrence of a competitive equilibrium, unless such increasing returns to scale are tamed by the decreasing utility of uncertain returns due to risk aversion, orÐin the short runÐby increasing marginal costs of production. The paper is organized as follows. The notions of informational economies of scale and of market information are described in the next section. The third section sets the formal framework of the paper. The increasing returns arising from market information for a risk-neutral ®rm are expounded in the fourth section while the behaviour of a risk-averse ®rm is brie¯y discussed in the ®fth section. A certain amount of knowledge and information is required for the setting up and working of a ®rm. The usual treatment that the theory of the ®rm devotes to these immaterial inputs of production consists in considering them as part of the initial endowments and embodying them in the production possibility set. The use of information in the process of decision-making is usually dealt with in a rather similar way: the information set available to decision-makers is considered as given at the moment when choices have to be made. This approach is not completely satisfactory inasmuch as it disregards the effects of newly acquired information. Rational and optimizing agents, when facing some sort of uncertainty, will use all the information that is freely available to them and purchase costly information up to the point where the marginal bene®t arising from it is equal to its marginal cost. In this respect, the use of information follows the rules of optimization that apply to any input of production. On the other hand, information is a special kind of input; it is subject to a special algebra. This point is worth a brief digression. Consider, for instance, a unit of a factor of production, say a bar of metal. If you take another identical bar of metal you have two bars of
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2002
I am especially indebted to Joel Hasbrouck who provided me a number of insights when I was a Visiting Scholar at the Stern Department of Finance in 1999. I also thank Alen Vukic, Fabrizio Ferri, Dušan Isakov, and Hung Neng Lai for their comments. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the UBS Bank, which does not take on any responsibility about the contents and the opinions expressed in this paper.
Strategic Management Journal, 1993
Broadly speaking, the firm will emphasize nonprice dimensions (Scitovsky, 1991) to enhance its market share -d profits. This argument is developed in greater detail in Cyert, Kumar and Williams (1993). *The issue of sustainability of comparative advantage (or sources of rents) has been directly examined by Williams (1992).
2023
This textbook is primarily designed to be used by students taking the Economics of Information class at the Faculty of Business Administration in Foreign Languages at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. The textbook provides outlines of each lecture, examples, and links to additional reading materials and should be used in conjunction with the lectures. It is not meant to replace in-class participation and will make most sense for those students who take part in all lectures and group work. Students should take note of the fact that some reading materials in the Further Reading sections are not to be taken at face value. A few articles which include logical fallacies have been included in order to better describe the range of opinions which exist regarding some topics. Critical thinking is essential when dealing with the information that we are presented. Students and professors at other universities are welcome to use the materials. Any interesting examples or constructive feedback which may help improve future editions of the textbook are more than welcome and will be credited to the contributors if they are included.
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 2006
Keywords:economics of information;information sector;information serviceseconomics of information;information sector;information services
Resume: This paper draws on ideas in economics and game theory to develop a new theory of marketing and corporate communication in the emerging network economy. We argue that in a network economy, firms and consumers will confront" coordination problems." With the emerging network economy all this become urgent because the availability and cost of information decreases. Also, timing issues becomes crucial as millions of people get access to the same information simultaneously.
We study the informational role of prices. To that end, we consider the framework of a dominant firm with a competitive fringe, which generalizes the monopoly framework (i.e., a dominant firm without a competitive fringe). When the competitive fringe is large enough, there exists a unique fully revealing equilibrium, in which the price conveys full information about the quality of the good to uninformed buyers. Deceiving the uninformed buyers by charging a high price and mimicking a high quality is not profitable when the competitive fringe is large enough. Since a higher price triggers more sales on the part of the competitive fringe, residual demand and thus profits are reduced.
Physical Review E, 2011
We study the spreading of information on technological developments in socioeconomic systems where the social contacts of agents are represented by a network of connections. In the model, agents get informed about the existence and advantages of new innovations through advertising activities of producers, which are then followed by an interagent information transfer. Computer simulations revealed that varying the strength of external driving and of interagent coupling, furthermore, the topology of social contacts, the model presents a complex behavior with interesting novel features: On the macrolevel the system exhibits logistic behavior typical for the diffusion of innovations. The time evolution can be described analytically by an integral equation that captures the nucleation and growth of clusters of informed agents. On the microlevel, small clusters are found to be compact with a crossover to fractal structures with increasing size. The distribution of cluster sizes has a power-law behavior with a crossover to a higher exponent when long-range social contacts are present in the system. Based on computer simulations we construct an approximate phase diagram of the model on a regular square lattice of agents.
Australian Economic Papers, 2008
We investigate a model where two firms choose whether to acquire information on a common competitor. We find that strategic complementarity on information acquisition exists, yielding multiple equilibria. In addition, we investigate welfare implication of information acquisition. We find that information acquisition reduces both consumer surplus and the total profits of the firms. . [email protected] * We are indebted to an anonymous referee and the editor for their valuable and constructive suggestions. Needless to say, we are responsible for any remaining errors. The financial supports from the Japan Securities Scholarship Foundation, the JSPS, and the MEXT are greatly appreciated. 1 For cases with direct or quantity-setting competition under demand uncertainty, see and .
2001
We analyse the consequences of an increase of information (say as a consequence of the internet), on the equilibrium of a pure exchange economy with n goods and m agents. We assume that such an increase modifies the characteristics of goods la Lancaster and has a positive effect on utility. We show that in equilibrium an increase of information increases a linear combination of the utilities of the agents. The different possibilities of gains and losses are explicitly analysed in an example with two goods and two agents.
Proceedings International Conference on Multi Agent Systems (Cat. No.98EX160), 1998
We explore the dynamic behavior of information economies: very large open economies of automated information agents that will exist on the Internet. Such large interacting systems are likely to exhibit emergent phenomena not straightforward to anticipate. We model a simple information economy that revolves around economically-aware newsltering brokers to whom consumers choose to subscribe. Our analyses and simulations reveal interesting emergent phenomena. One negative phenomenon we observe is price war instability manifested as limit-cycle behavior, looping among substantially suboptimal states. One positive phenomenon we observe is fairly e cient niche specialization by brokers in which the market e ectively self-organizes.
Management Science, 2007
Asystematic understanding of industry dynamics is critical to strategy research because individual firm performance dynamics both reflect and affect change at the industry level. Descriptive research on industry dynamics has identified a dominant pattern where prices fall, output rises, and the number of firms rises and then falls over time. Several models have been advanced to explain these patterns, with a particular focus on explaining why a shakeout in the number of firms occurs. In the most prominent models, shakeout is generated by rising realized heterogeneity among firms that either is assumed to be unrecognized but determined ex ante or is generated by stochastic innovation outcomes coupled with convex adjustment costs and scale advantages in innovation and learning. In this paper, we develop an alternative model where heterogeneity develops among firms over time (leading to a shakeout) because firms must make choices about highly interdependent productive activities where ...
2017
Public information releases from corporations and financial institutions have a significant impact on financial markets and stock prices. A long-standing issue in financial economics is to understand how fast the information gets incorporated into stock prices. This issue is often referred to the notion of price discovery. It is also important to understand how the information gets released to the public (e.g., newspaper articles, press conferences) influence price discovery. In addition, how recent technological development in financial markets influence price discovery and how it impacts the social welfare of investors is an ongoing debate. This thesis sheds light on these issues and provides new empirical findings on price discovery following two public information releases, that is, earnings and macroeconomic announcements. iii Preface Chapter 2 is based solely on my own work. Chapter 3 is a co-authored project with Assistant Professor Oliver Boguth of Arizona State University and Assistant Professor Vincent Grégoire of the University of Melbourne. I initiated this project from previous research of mine. We contributed equally to the writing and to the empirical analysis. Chapter 4 is a co-authored project with my adviser Professor Adlai J. Fisher and Ph.D. colleague Jinfei Sheng. We contributed equally to the writing and to the empirical analysis.
2007
Economic literature often offers conflicting views on the likely efficiency effects of information ex-changes, communication between firms, and market transparency. On the one hand, it is argued that increased information dissemination improves firm planning to the benefit of ...
2015
I develop a model of asset markets with dispersed private information in a continuous-time, macroeconomic setting where firm managers learn from financial prices when making their investment decisions. I derive a tractable equilibrium that highlights a feedback loop between investor trading behavior and firm real investment. While the strength of real signals for the expectations of managers and investors is procyclical, financial signals are strongest during downturns and recoveries. Through this channel, contamination in price signals during financial crises can distort expectations to be more pessimistic, and lead to deeper recessions and slower recoveries. I explore the asset pricing and policy implications of my model, as well as several conceptual issues that it raises for empirical analysis. ∗I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Wei Xiong, for all of his helpful guidance and support. I sincerely thank my dissertation committee members, Mikhail Golosov and Stephen Morris, as we...
A simple model of financial market with rational learning and without friction is presented in which the value of private information increases with the mass of informed individuals, contrary to the property presented by Grossman and Stiglitz (1980). The key assumption is the possibility of independent discrete shocks on the fundamental value and on an exogenous demand.
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 1991
We consider the implications of process innovation for the aggregate level of employment of assuming that not all firms adopt new technologies simultaneously and that non-innovators adopt (temporarily) disequilibrium strategies (due to imperfect information about the introduction of the new technology). Two alternative scenarios are explored. In one, consumers' demands arise from symmetric homothetic preferences, and in the other from asymmetric (Hotellingtype) preferences. We find that there may be a reduction in employment in the transition to the new equilibrium under both types of preferences even if there is no decrease (or an increase) in the new (long-run) equilibrium level of employment. The conditions under which this will occur are however different for the alternative preference structures. Further, the latter are shown to have different implications for the equilibrium effects of process innovation.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
We study the relation between noise (liquidity traders, endowment shocks) and the aggregation of information in financial markets with large number of agents. We show that as long as noise increases with the number of agents, the limiting equilibrium is well-defined and leads to non-trivial information acquisition, even when per-capita noise tends to zero. In such equilibrium risk sharing and price revelation play different roles than in the standard limiting economy in which per-capita noise is finite. We apply our model to study information sales by a monopolist, and information acquisition in multi-asset markets, showing that it leads to qualitatively different results with respect to those in the existing literature. Our conditions on noise are shown to be necessary and sufficient to have limiting economies with perfectly competitive behavior consistent with endogenous information acquisition.
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