This article investigates how a privately-informed seller could signal her type by gathering information about the buyer's match value. We study two alternative ways to obtain information. In the first one, labeled information acquisition, the seller can acquire exogenous signals by facing a...

We study a firm's incentives to build and maintain reputation for quality, when quality is persistent and can be certified at a cost. We characterize all Markov-perfect equilibria where the firm's choices -i.e., timing of certification and investment– depend only on the firm's reputation. MPE...

Using a standard strategic pricing game, I determine how sellers set prices when facing buyers who are “rationally inattentive” to information about product quality. Two cases are studied: strategically sophisticated buyers who are rationally inattentive to exogenous information about...

A sender chooses ex ante how her information will be disclosed to a privately informed receiver who then takes one of two actions. The sender wishes to maximize the probability that the receiver takes the desired action. The sender faces an ex ante quantity-quality tradeoff: sending positive...

In a market where sellers solicit certification to overcome asymmetric information, we show that the profit of a monopolistic certifier can be hump-shaped in its reputation for accuracy: a higher accuracy attracts high-quality sellers but sometimes repels low-quality sellers. As a consequence,...

In some markets, consumers do not know the attributes of all the products that are available in the market, or the prices at which they are offered. To reduce this uncertainty consumers may, at a cost, gather and process information about the attributes and prices of the different products. The...

I model a firm that invests in both the quality of its product and in providing information to the market. Consumers learn about the quality through both news the firm cannot influence and promotion it controls. This ability to promote creates and enhances incentives for investment. Promotion...

This paper presents a model in which firms compete for consumers who make repeat purchases of experience goods. Consumers can observe price offers of firms, even though they may not observe the quality before purchase. We set up a simple two-period model and find the following results. First, we...

This paper explores how social interactions among consumers shape markets. In a two-country model, consumers meet and exchange information about the quality of the goods. As information spreads, the demands evolve, affecting the prices and quantities manufactured by profit-maximizing firms. We...