Strategic Disclosure of Demand Information by Duopolists: Theory and Experiment

Jos Jansen and Andreas Pollak

No 75, Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Cologne, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the strategic disclosure of demand information and product-market strategies of duopolists. In a setting where firms may fail to receive information, we show that firms selectively disclose information in equilibrium in order to influence their competitor's product-market strategy. Subsequently, we analyze the firms' behavior in a laboratory experiment. We find that subjects often use selective disclosure strategies, and this finding appears to be robust to changes in the information structure, the mode of competition, and the degree of product differentiation. Moreover, subjects in our experiment display product-market conduct that is largely consistent with theoretical predictions.

Keywords: duopoly; Cournot competition; Bertrand competition; information disclosure; incomplete information; common value; product differentiation; asymmetry; skewed distribution; laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D22 D82 D83 L13 M4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-cta, nep-exp and nep-ger
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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