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Essays on information economics

This dissertation addresses three topics on information economics. Generally,
information is not perfect or costless as classical economics assumes. Thus, a consumer
searches information at his cost or a seller provides information at his cost. First, chapter
2 presents a theoretical model where a consumer searches for local brand information.
We show that a national brand providing information has a larger market share. Second,
chapter 3 presents a theoretical model where a store randomizes prices and advertises the
price changes. We show that at equilibrium the advertising intensity is negatively related
to price and price density function is "U" shaped. As advertising costs decrease, average
price decreases with more competition. Also as advertising costs decrease from the
maximum to zero, price density function changes from monopoly price spike to nonprofit
price spike. Thirdly, chapter 4 presents an example where information imperfection
is not remedied so information asymmetry remains to cause moral hazard. The deposit
insurance rate of a bank is set uniformly regardless of its loan quality because the
government cannot discern the quality. Then, a failed bank has higher efficiency in good
economic years by spending less on loan monitoring but lending aggressively, but has
lower efficiency in difficult years because of its growing non-performing loan. The
efficiency of Korean banks between 1990 and 1997 is measured by DEA (Data
Envelopment Analysis), and the regression shows that the efficiency of the failed bank is
affected by moral hazard. / Graduation date: 2003

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/31125
Date01 May 2003
CreatorsYoun, Hyungho
ContributorsTremblay, Victor J.
Source SetsOregon State University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation

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