Product Safety: Liability, R&D and Signaling

Andrew Daughety and Jennifer Reinganum ()

Game Theory and Information from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper develops a two-stage model of product design and safety signaling incorporating a parametric liability specification in a monopoly context. In the first stage, the firm engages in research and development in order to determine the safety of its product. We model the research and development process as sequential sampling from a fixed distribution of potential safety levels. Thus, R&D is a stochastic process, partially controlled by investment, which ultimately yields an equilibrium set of acceptable safety levels. Since the outcome of research and development trials is unobservable to consumers, in the second stage of the model the firm must choose its price with the understanding that consumers may attempt to draw inferences about the product's safety from the firm's pricing behavior. Given the price, consumers infer the level of safety and choose the amount of the product to acquire; injuries then lead to losses which are allocated by the particular liability system in place. We vary the liability system's allocation

JEL-codes: C7 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 1994-03-29, Revised 1994-03-30
Note: Zipped using PKZIP v2.04, encoded using UUENCODE v5.15. Zipped file includes 1 file -- Prodsafe.941 (body in WP5.1, 21 pages)
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Product Safety: Liability, R&D, and Signaling (1995)
Working Paper: Product Safety: Liability, R & D and Signaling (1994)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:9403007

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