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 study the mechanism design problem for a seller of an indivisible good in a setting where privately informed buyers can acquire additional information and refine their valuations for the good at a cost. For this setting, we propose optimal (revenue-maximizing) and efficient...