Second Opinions and Price Competition: Inefficiency in the Market for Expert Advice
研究专家需付出不可观测努力来诊断消费者需求的市场，发现价格竞争与均衡努力之间存在矛盾，导致无法实现次优福利，而价格管制能提升福利。
We consider a market in which an expert must exert costly but unobservable effort to identify the service that meets the consumer's need. In our model, experts offer competing contracts and the consumer may gather multiple opinions. We explore the incentives that a competitive sampling of prices and opinions provides for experts to exert effort and find that there is a tension between price competition and the equilibrium effort. In particular, the equilibrium fails to realize the second best welfare optimum. An intervention, that limits price competition via price control, increases welfare. Copyright The Review of Economic Studies Limited, 2003.