Competition in Markets for Information
34 Pages Posted: 2 Mar 2000
Date Written: August 1999
Abstract
Competition among sellers of information in a noisy rational expectation equilibrium is considered. Trader's preferences for information are explicitly characterized. It is shown that the competition on market for information makes providers of financial information to price their products in a way that leads traders to purchase all signals available. If signals are substitutes, competition pushes the price of information lower than that in monopolistic settings. However, if signals are complements, the price of an individual signal in duopoly actually exceeds the one in monopolistic settings, and information producers are involved in tacit collusion. Externalities of information lead to counterintuitive results that (a) efficiency of the competitive market for information (as measured by quality of signals offered for sale) is no better than in monopolistic setting, and (b) competition leads to no improvement on the part of the traders as providers of financial information are still able to appropriate all of the consumer surplus.
JEL Classification: G20, G14, D43, D80, D84
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation