This paper studies how an improved information environment affects consumer search and firm competition. We find conditions for information improvement to have unambiguous impacts on search duration, price and consumer welfare. In many cases consumers benefit from information improvement regardless of how it affects the market price, but there are also cases where information improvement raises price significantly so that consumers suffer from it. Our model provides a unified way to consider the market implications of various types of information improvement such as search advertising, personalized recommendations, filtering, and VR shopping technology.
This paper develops a new framework for studying multiproduct intermediaries when consumers demand multiple products and face search frictions. We show that a multiproduct intermediary is profitable even when it does not improve consumer search efficiency. In its optimal product selection, it stocks high-value products exclusively to attract consumers to visit, then profits by selling non-exclusive products which are relatively cheap to buy from upstream suppliers. However, relative to the social optimum, the intermediary tends to be too big and stock too many products exclusively. As applications we use the framework to study the optimal design of a shopping mall, and the impact of direct-to-consumer sales by upstream suppliers on the retail market.
Open banking facilitates data sharing consented to by customers who generate the data, with the regulatory goal of promoting competition between traditional banks and challenger fintech entrants. We study lending market competition when sharing banks’ customer transaction data enables better borrower screening. Open banking can make the entire financial industry better off yet leave all borrowers worse off, even if borrowers have the control of whether to share their banking data. We highlight the importance of the equilibrium credit quality inference from borrowers’ endogenous sign-up decisions. We also study extensions with fintech affinities and data sharing on borrower preferences.
How will an improved information environment affects competition and market performance when consumers face search frictions? This paper provides a unified way to model information improvement that makes the search pool more “selective” (e.g., due to personalized recommendations), or more “informative” (e.g., due to the availability of more detailed product information). Information improvement tends to induce consumers to search less, intensify price competition and benefit consumers, if the search friction is small, or if information improvement truncates the match utility distribution from below. More generally, however, it is also possible for information improvement to raise the market price and harm consumers.