Incentives for Quality in Friendly and Hostile Informational Environments

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fleckinger, Pierre; Glachant, Matthieu; Moineville, Gabrielle
• 署名单位: Universite PSL; MINES ParisTech; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); CNRS - Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (INSHS); Paris School of Economics
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20150119
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 242-274
• 关键词: seller reputation; MARKET; certification; lemons; price

摘要

We develop a model of costly quality provision under biased disclosure. We define as friendly an environment in which the disclosure probability increases with quality, and as hostile an environment in which the opposite holds. Hostile environments produce a positive externality among sellers and potentially multiple equilibria. In contrast, friendly environments always yield a unique equilibrium. We establish that the environment that maximizes quality generates signals contradicting buyers' expectations. Hence, hostility produces greater incentives for quality than friendliness when costs are low and monitoring resources high.