Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and information suppression in competitive markets

Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and inf ...
Xavier Gabaix, Xavier Gabaix
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Last edited by MARC Bot
December 13, 2020 | History

Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and information suppression in competitive markets

"Bayesian consumers infer that hidden add-on prices (e.g. the cost of ink for a printer) are likely to be high prices. If consumers are Bayesian, firms will not shroud information in equilibrium. However, shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic (or unaware) consumers. Such shrouding creates an inefficiency, which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors' customers. However, if add-ons have close substitutes, a "curse of debiasing" arises, and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add-ons. In equilibrium, two kinds of exploitation coexist. Optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high-priced add-ons. In turn, sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes. It is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates. It is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to non-exploitative firms. We show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets, even in markets with costless advertising, and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

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Language
English

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Cover of: Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and information suppression in competitive markets
Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and information suppression in competitive markets
2005, National Bureau of Economic Research
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia, and information suppression in competitive markets

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 12/8/2005.
Also available in print.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Published in
Cambridge, MA
Series
NBER working paper series ;, working paper 11755, Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;, working paper no. 11755.

Classifications

Library of Congress
HB1

The Physical Object

Format
Electronic resource

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL3479324M
LCCN
2005620583

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December 13, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
November 28, 2012 Edited by AnandBot Fixed spam edits.
November 23, 2012 Edited by 188.120.244.18 Edited without comment.
December 5, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Added subjects from MARC records.
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