Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
良好的非系统性错误
Good Unsystematic Mistakes
摘要
We study the effects of consumers' unsystematic perception mistakes on market outcomes and consumer welfare. In the model, two firms produce goods of different quality and compete by choosing prices. Consumers observe the qualities and/or the prices with noise and make choice mistakes as a result. When the magnitude of mistakes grows, the lower‐quality firm increases its price while the higher‐quality firm initially reduces its price before increasing it. We show that this price reduction effect is so strong that consumers eventually benefit from making a small amount of unsystematic mistakes despite the sub‐optimal choices and the increasing price of the lower‐quality firm.
中文摘要
我们研究了消费者非系统性感知错误对市场结果和消费者福利的影响。在模型中，两家企业生产不同质量的商品，并通过选择价格进行竞争。消费者在观察质量和/或价格时存在噪声，从而导致选择错误。当错误幅度增大时，低质量企业提高其价格，而高质量企业则先降低价格后再提高。我们表明，这种降价效应如此显著，以至于消费者最终会因犯少量非系统性错误而受益，尽管存在次优选择及低质量企业价格上涨的情况。