This paper studies the relationship between transparency on the consumer side and productivity of firms. We show that more transparent markets are characterized by higher average productivity as firms with low productivity abstain from entering these markets.

Including the entry decision in a Bertrand model with imperfectly informed consumers, we introduce a trade-off at the level of social welfare. On the one hand, market transparency is beneficial when the number of firms is exogenously given. On the other, a higher degree of market transparency...

This paper revisits the relationship between transparency on the consumer side and product variety as analyzed in Schultz (2009). We identify two welfare effects of transparency. More transparency decreases price-cost margins which is beneficial forwelfare. On the other hand, more transparency...

This paper introduces price-dependent individual demand into the circular city model of product differentiation. We show that for any finite number of firms, a unique symmetric price equilibrium exists provided that demand functions are not too convex. As in the case of unit demand, the number...

This paper studies the relationship between transparency on the consumer side and productivity of firms. We show that more transparent markets are characterized by higher average productivity as firms with low productivity abstain from entering these markets.

This paper studies welfare consequences of consumer-side market transparency with endogenous entry of firms. Different from most studies, we consider the unique symmetric entry equilibrium, which is in mixed strategies. We identify two effects of market transparency on welfare: a competition...

This paper revisits the optimal entry decision in a differentiated product market where customer demand is price-sensitive and depends on a per-unit transport cost. We show that too few firms may enter for high entry cost and high transport cost compared to the socially optimal outcome.

The paper reports the results of an experiment where asymmetric sellers of a product can obfuscate the market. We show that policy measures may have unintended effects of increasing obfuscation incentives. We find that policies that limit the effectiveness of obfuscation and policies that...

This paper revisits the excess entry theorem in spatial models à la Vickrey (1964) and Salop (1979) while relaxing the assumption of inelastic demand. Using a demand function with a constant demand elasticity, we show that the number of firms that enter a market decreases with the degree of...

This paper explores the implications of price-dependent demand in spatial models of product differentiation. We introduce consumers with a quasi-linear utility function in the framework of the Salop (1979) model. We show that the so-called excess entry theorem relies critically on the assumption...