Information acquisition and price discrimination in dynamic, decentralized markets
研究在分散市场中，企业通过获取消费者偏好信息来提高价格歧视程度，发现信息选择存在战略互补性，可能导致多重均衡，且部分均衡在交易摩擦消失时无法趋近完全竞争。
We formalize a decentralized market where consumers with privately-known preferences meet bilaterally with firms. The latter acquire information to raise their degree of price discrimination from second to first. In a dynamic setting where outside options are endogenous, information choices are strategic complements, possibly generating multiple equilibria across which consumers' surpluses and firms' investment in information are negatively correlated. While there exists a sequence of equilibria converging to perfect competition when trading frictions vanish, there exist other equilibria that fail to approach perfect competition. Our findings are robust to firm heterogeneity, entry, noisy signals, and consumers' price-setting power.