If a product has two dimensions of quality, one observable and one not, a firm can use observable quality as a signal … of unobservable quality. The correlation between consumers' valuation of high quality in each dimension is a key … determinant of the feasibility of such signaling. A firm may use price alone as a signal, or price and quality together. Both …

If a product has two dimensions of quality, one observable and one not, a firm can use observable quality as a signal … of unobservable quality. The correlation between consumers' valuation of high quality in each dimension is a key … determinant of the feasibility of such signaling. A firm may use price alone as a signal, or price and quality together. Both …

One striking development associated with the explosion of e-commerce is the increased transparency of sellers' quality … history. In this paper we analyze how this affects firms' incentives to invest in quality when the outcome of investment is … uncertain. We identify two conflicting effects. On the one hand, reducing the consumer's cost of search for quality exacerbates …

-informative advertisements can affect people’s choices by influencing their perception of product quality. We present a model in which people can … learn about product quality by observing the choices of others. Consumers are, however, not able to fully distinguish … equilibrium the most observed product is always most likely to be of the highest quality. The analysis has important policy …

France has experienced massive changes in its regulation of working time during the last decade. These changes generate …

Economists have emphasized the role of dissipative advertising and price as signals of quality. Most works, however …, limit the number of types to two options: high and low quality. Yet, production costs and quality both result from R … quality and marginal cost are both subject to chance. In a static framework (no repeat purchases and no informed consumers …

costs and quality-dependent costs of production and compete in quality and price in the domestic market. Quality … quality standard binding for both foreign and domestic firms. In the present of an initial cost advantage of the domestic firm …, a sufficiently high minimum quality standard set by the domestic government will enable the domestic firm to induce exit …

Hotelling framework, this paper analyses the effect of heterogeneous objectives of the hospitals on quality differentiation … driving force is the single regulated price which induces under-(over-)provision of quality of the more (less) efficient … the private (public) duopoly. This medium price discourages overprovision of quality of the less efficient hospital and …

market where buyers only observe the average quality supplied. The model is a generalization of the standard Cournot duopoly …, which corresponds to the special case where the two qualities are equal. When the quality differential is large, the firms …

downgrades quality whereas the seller sometimes upgrades it. Our model of targeting with endogenous product quality provides some … new insights into the way the transition from mass to specialized advertising can affect market outcomes. Quality …