Across a range of industries, regulators use ratings to inform consumers about firms and products. Using online experiments, we investigate two pathways through which individuals extract the information communicated by such ratings: beliefs about the distribution of ratings (e.g., how often good...

This paper examines the publication of quality indicators in service markets with public finance systems, such as education and healthcare markets. We provide a spatial model of product differentiation in which the reporting of such indicators increases consumers’ decision weight on quality...