Who Benefits from Information Disclosure? The Case of Retail Gasoline Academic Article

abstract

• How does online price disclosure affect competition when both consumers and firms can use the disclosed information? This paper addresses this question exploiting the sequential implementation of an online price-disclosure policy in the Chilean retail gasoline industry. The results show that disclosure increased margins by 9 percent on average, though the effects varied across the country depending on the intensity of local search behavior. Because margins increased the least, and even decreased, in high-search areas, where income is also higher, the results also show that price disclosure policies may have important distributional effects. (JEL D83, L11, L71, L81, O13, Q35, Q41)

authors

• Luco Echeverria, Fernando

published proceedings

• AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS

altmetric score

• 19.4

author list (cited authors)

• Luco, F.

citation count

• 35

complete list of authors

• Luco, Fernando

publication date

• May 2019

publisher

• American Economic Association  Publisher

published in

• American Economic Journal: Microeconomics  Journal

keywords

• Competition
• Coordination
• Information Disclosure
• Search Costs

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1257/mic.20170110

start page

• 277

end page

• 305

volume

• 11

issue

• 2

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/mic.20170110