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...

We investigate the effects of market transparency on prices in the Bertrand duopoly model for both the cases of strategic complementarities and strategic substitutes. For the former class of games “conventional wisdom” concerning prices is confirmed, since they decrease. The consumers are...

In a Hotelling market with endogenous choice of product characteristics increasing market transparency on the consumer side leads to less product differentiation, and lower prices and profits. This is welfare improving for all consumers and total surplus increases.

We study the long run e¤ects of transparency in a circular town model of a differentiated market. The market is not fully transparent on the consumer side: A fraction of consumers are uninformed about prices. Increasing transparency reduces the equilibrium price, profit and entry of firms. This...

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 a model in which some consumers shop on the basis of price alone, without attention to potential differences in product quality. A firm may offer a low-quality product to exploit these inattentive consumers. In the unique symmetric equilibrium of the model, firms choose prices...

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 deals with capacity constrained price competition in a duopoly model. The model resembles that in Kreps and Scheinkman (1983), but the timing of the investment/capacity choice is endogenous. In equilibrium, one of the firms will invest to become the Stackelberg leader, although the...

We survey some of the literature on the effects of improved market transparency on competition in ologopoly. Generally, improved transparency from the perspective of irms makes detection of deviations from tacitly collusive agreements easier, thus facilitating oligopolistic coordination. On the...