[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/jeurec/v7y2009i2-3p399-410.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer Protection and the Incentive to Become Informed

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Armstrong
  • John Vickers
  • Jidong Zhou
Abstract
We discuss the impact of consumer protection policies on consumers' incentives to become informed of the best deals available in the market. In a market with costly information acquisition, we find that imposing a cap on suppliers' prices reduces the incentive to become informed of market conditions, with the result that prices paid by consumers (both informed and uninformed) may rise. In a related model where consumers have the ability to refuse to receive marketing, we find that this ability softens price competition and can make all consumers worse off. (JEL: D18, D83, L51) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Armstrong & John Vickers & Jidong Zhou, 2009. "Consumer Protection and the Incentive to Become Informed," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 399-410, 04-05.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:7:y:2009:i:2-3:p:399-410
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fershtman, Chaim & Fishman, Arthur, 1994. "The 'perverse' effects of wage and price controls in search markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 1099-1112, May.
    2. Simon P. Anderson & André de Palma, 2007. "Information Congestion: open access in a two-sided market," THEMA Working Papers 2007-10, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    3. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-969, July.
    4. Armstrong, Mark, 2008. "Interactions between competition and consumer policy," MPRA Paper 7258, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Il-Horn Hann & Kai-Lung Hui & Sang-Yong T. Lee & Ivan P. L. Png, 2008. "Consumer Privacy and Marketing Avoidance: A Static Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(6), pages 1094-1103, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Armstrong, Mark, 2011. "Economic models of consumer protection policies," MPRA Paper 34773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Mark Armstrong, 2015. "Search and Ripoff Externalities," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 273-302, November.
    3. Vickers, John, 2021. "Competition for imperfect consumers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    4. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Failing to Choose the Best Price: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 303-340, November.
    5. Johannes Johnen & David Ronayne, 2021. "The only Dance in Town: Unique Equilibrium in a Generalized Model of Price Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 595-614, September.
    6. Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, 2011. "An empirical model of search with vertically differentiated products," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(4), pages 729-757, December.
    7. David Ronayne, 2020. "The Only Dance in Town: Unique Equilibrium in a Generalized Model of Price Competition," Economics Series Working Papers 874, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Michael Rauh, 2005. "Complementarity, Search, and Price Dispersion," Game Theory and Information 0508008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Shapiro, Joel, 2004. "Income taxation in a frictional labor market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 465-479, March.
    10. Obradovits, Martin, 2014. "Austrian-style gasoline price regulation: How it may backfire," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 33-45.
    11. Cai, Xiaoming, 2015. "Minimum prices in a model with search frictions and price posting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 61-64.
    12. Mark Armstrong & Steffen Huck, 2010. "Behavioral Economics as Applied to Firms: A Primer," CESifo Working Paper Series 2937, CESifo.
    13. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2012. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy in Financial Markets: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2012-14, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    14. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2017. "Consumer confusion, obfuscation and price regulation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(2), pages 169-190, May.
    15. Evangelos Rouskas, 2021. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion with Search Regret Disutility," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 9(1), pages 11-27, June.
    16. Rauh, Michael T., 2004. "Wage and price controls in the equilibrium sequential search model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1287-1300, December.
    17. Luc Wathieu & Allan Friedman, 2009. "An empirical approach to understanding privacy concerns," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-09-001, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 14 Jan 2009.
    18. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck, 2022. "The Liquidity-Augmented Model of Macroeconomic Aggregates: A New Monetarist DSGE Approach," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 45, pages 134-167, July.
    19. Becker, Sascha S. & Nautz, Dieter, 2012. "Inflation, price dispersion and market integration through the lens of a monetary search model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 624-634.
    20. Simon P. Anderson & André de Palma, 2012. "Competition for attention in the Information (overload) Age," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 1-25, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D18 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Protection
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:7:y:2009:i:2-3:p:399-410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.