Bad News Turned Good: Reversal under Censorship

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Smirnov, Aleksei; Starkov, Egor
• 署名单位: University of Zurich; University of Copenhagen
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20190379
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 506-560
• 关键词: disclosure; reputation; signals

摘要

Sellers often have the power to censor the reviews of their products. We explore the effect of these censorship policies in markets where some consumers are unaware of possible censorship. We find that if the share of such naive consumers is not too large, then rational consumers treat any bad review that is revealed in equilibrium as good news about product quality. This makes bad reviews worth revealing and allows the seller to use them to signal his product's quality to rational consumers.