Collaborative Research: The Effects of Information on Firm Conduct and Market Structure

有一个重要的经济学理论文献，确定了各种方式，通过提供更多的信息给消费者可能会导致改善市场效率和消费者福利，特别是。理论上的见解为政府寻求增加消费者可用信息量的政策提供了基础。这些政策的例子包括食品标签法，会计披露规则和家用电器的能源效率标签。与此同时，现有的实证研究的影响，消费者对企业行为的信息发现小或可以忽略不计的影响，铸造怀疑的重要性，这样的政策。在这个项目中，我们分析了一个监管的变化，提供了一个有吸引力的contextfor评估增加产品信息对公司的产品质量的选择和披露decisions.In 1998，洛杉矶县推出了卫生质量等级卡，在餐馆橱窗里展示。监管变化提供了一个实验，企业是否受到自愿披露（卫生质量）没有可核查性，自愿披露与可核查性或强制性披露。我们的研究表明，增加信息对餐馆卫生质量的影响很大。我们还发现，强制性信息披露的效果与自愿性信息披露的效果非常相似。这一发现的一个可能的含义是，强制披露法律（由于行业团体的游说，这可能很难引入）不如让政府提供机制/程序让公司自愿披露可验证的产品信息重要。我们数据集的丰富性使我们能够分析等级卡的影响如何在餐馆之间存在差异。这是有趣的，因为我们可以解决的问题，已经receivedlittle或没有注意到在现有的实证文献，如：（一）声誉帮助firmstto克服逆向选择问题，（二）做特许连锁餐厅搭便车chainreputation，和（iii）什么是增加产品信息对企业的profitabilityand市场结构的影响？

There is a significant theoretical literature in economics that identifies various ways throughwhich providing more information to consumers may lead to improvements in market effciencyand consumer welfare in particular. The theoretical insights provide a basis for governmentpolicies that seek to increase the amount of information available to consumers. Examples ofsuch policies include food labeling laws, accounting disclosure rules and energy effciency labelson home applicances. Meanwhile existing empirical studies into the effects of information toconsumers on firm behavior find small or negligible effects, casting doubt on the importance ofsuch policies. In this project, we analyze a regulatory change that provides an appealing contextfor evaluating the effects of increased product information on firms' product quality choices anddisclosure decisions.In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurantwindows. The regulatory change provides an experiment in whether firms are subject to volun-tary disclosure (of hygiene quality) without verifiability, voluntary disclosure with verifiabilityor mandatory disclosure. Our research indicates substantial effects of the increased informationon restaurant hygiene quality. We also find that the effects from mandatory disclosure are verysimilar to the effects from voluntary verifiable disclosure. A possible implication of this findingis that mandatory disclosure laws (which could be hard to introduce due to lobbying by indus-try groups) are less important than having the government provide mechanisms/procedures forfirms to voluntarily disclose verifiable product information.The richness of our dataset allows us to also analyze how the effects of the grade cards differacross restaurants. This is interesting because we can address questions that have receivedlittle or no attention in the existing empirical literature, such as: (i) does reputation help firmsto overcome adverse selection problems, (ii) do franchised chain-restaurants free-ride on chainreputation, and (iii) what is the effect of the increased product information on firms' profitabilityand market structure?