Too much of a good thing: The consequences of market transparency

Abstract

Including the entry decision in a Bertrand model with imperfectly informed consumers,we introduce a trade-off at the level of socialwelfare. On the one hand, market transparency is beneficial when the number of firms is exogenously given. On the other, a higher degree of market transparency implies lower profits and hence makes it less attractive to enter the market in the first place. It turns out that the second effect dominates: too much market transparency has a detrimental effect on consumer surplus and on social welfare.