I study the question of how much product information should be available to consumers. A monopolist sells one unit of product. The consumer is initially uninformed of the product value but can incur costs to observe a noisy signal of his valuation. I show that consumer surplus can be increasing...

We allow a strategic trader to choose when to acquire information about an asset's payoff, instead of endowing her with it. When the trader dynamically controls the precision of a flow of information, the optimal precision evolves stochastically and increases with market liquidity. However,...

The disclosure of inside information is a core component of EU capital market regulation. It underpins the market abuse regime, providing information to investors, and robbing it of its “inside” quality. Different regimes tackle the issue of inside information disclosure in distinct ways....

We study committees that acquire information, deliberate and vote. A member cares about state-dependent decision payoffs and about his reputation for expertise. The state remains unobserved, even after the decision has been taken. In such inconclusive environments, in equilibrium, a member's...

We consider the market for a risky asset with heterogeneous valuations. Private information that agents have about their own valuation is reflected in the equilibrium price. We study the learning externalities that arise in this setting, and in particular their implications for price...

Goods and services vary along a number of dimensions independently. Customers can choose to acquire information to assess the quality of some dimensions and not others. Their choices affect firms incentives to invest in quality and so lead to indirect externalities in consumers choices. We...

This study reveals previously undocumented geography-related diversity in information acquisition. Exploiting the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) server log, which tracks use by Internet Protocol (IP) address, we find that acquisition of...

We study which factors in terms of trading environment and trader characteristics determine individual information acquisition in experimental asset markets. Traders with larger endowments, existing inconclusive information, lower risk aversion, and less experience in financial markets tend to...

During financial crises, financial market regulators often restrict short-selling to support prices and curb volatility. However, evidence suggests that short-selling bans during the turmoil in financial markets in 2007--2009 failed to achieve regulators' goals. We analyze a model of costly...