Nicollier, Luciana A. (2012) Essays on industrial organisation : the role of consumers' generated information. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

A variety of economic agents rely on information generated by the consumers
when making their decisions. Not only consumers' rely on other consumers' ex-
periences when making their buying decisions, but also some governmental agen-
cies rely on customers' complaints to make inferences about the functioning of
some markets. Little is known, however, about how this information interacts
with the rms' investing and pricing decisions. A common denominator of the
various types of information generated by the consumers is that its content de-
pends on consumers' incentives to transmit information, which are not always
obvious and may vary across markets and time. This thesis studies the role of
the information generated by the consumers in two di erent contexts. The rst
chapter studies whether customers' complaints about the quality provided by a
regulated monopolist are informative about the rm's investment decisions. The
second chapter considers the pricing decision of a monopoly rm when the con-
sumers' buying decision is based on the reviews completed by previous consumers.

The main contributions are twofold. First, by endogenising consumers deci-
sion to lodge a complaint or complete a review, I am able to derive conclusions
about the informational content of consumers behaviour and about its strategic
interaction with the rms decisions. Second, the thesis makes a methodologi-
cal contribution because it proposes a novel way of dealing with the free riding
problem that lies at the very root of the generation of information by consumers.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Consumers -- Attitudes, Consumers -- Research, Business enterprises -- Economic aspects, Investments -- Mathematical models , Economics -- Mathematical models
Official Date:	September 2012
Dates:	Date Event September 2012 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Economics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Carvajal, Andrés M. ; Waterson, Michael, 1950-
Sponsors:	British Council ; University of Warwick. Warwick Economics Research Institute
Extent:	[8], 116 leaves : illlustrations.
Language:	eng

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