Competing to Commit: Markets with Rational Inattention
研究两家同质产品厂商竞争一个理性疏忽消费者的需求，发现竞争除了压低价格，还通过吸引消费者更多参与交易来缓解厂商的承诺问题，当注意力成本足够高时，竞争下的利润反而高于合谋。
Two homogeneous-good firms compete for a consumer’s unitary demand. The consumer is rationally inattentive and pays entropy costs to process information about firms’ offers. Compared to a collusion benchmark, competition produces two effects. As in standard models, competition puts downward pressure on prices. But, additionally, an attention effect arises: the consumer engages in trade more often. This alleviates the commitment problem that firms have when facing inattentive consumers and increases trade efficiency. For high enough attention costs, the attention effect dominates the effect on prices: firms’ profits are higher under competition than under collusion.