Robust Pricing for Quality Disclosure

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Gan, Tan, Li, Hongcheng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Gan, Tan
Li, Hongcheng
author_facet Gan, Tan
Li, Hongcheng
contents A platform charges a producer for disclosing quality evidence to consumers before trade. It aims to maximize its revenue guarantee across potentially multiple equilibria which arise from the interdependence of producer purchase decisions and consumer beliefs. The platform's optimal pricing strategy entrenches itself as a market gatekeeper: it induces a unique equilibrium in which non-disclosed products' perceived values are lower than the production cost. To achieve this goal, this pricing strategy iteratively destabilizes under-disclosure equilibria by luring producers to disclose slightly more. Higher-quality producers receive higher rents as their disclosure is prioritized. Despite losing rents, the platform optimally induces socially efficient information transmission for any given evidence structure, and it never benefits from garbling evidence. Compared to the non-robust benchmark, our framework generates more intuitive comparative statics: the platform's ability to extract surplus increases with its value as an information intermediary.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_06019
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust Pricing for Quality Disclosure
Gan, Tan
Li, Hongcheng
Theoretical Economics
A platform charges a producer for disclosing quality evidence to consumers before trade. It aims to maximize its revenue guarantee across potentially multiple equilibria which arise from the interdependence of producer purchase decisions and consumer beliefs. The platform's optimal pricing strategy entrenches itself as a market gatekeeper: it induces a unique equilibrium in which non-disclosed products' perceived values are lower than the production cost. To achieve this goal, this pricing strategy iteratively destabilizes under-disclosure equilibria by luring producers to disclose slightly more. Higher-quality producers receive higher rents as their disclosure is prioritized. Despite losing rents, the platform optimally induces socially efficient information transmission for any given evidence structure, and it never benefits from garbling evidence. Compared to the non-robust benchmark, our framework generates more intuitive comparative statics: the platform's ability to extract surplus increases with its value as an information intermediary.
title Robust Pricing for Quality Disclosure
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06019