IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ema/worpap/2007-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Congestion: open access in a two-sided market

Author

Listed:
  • Simon P. Anderson

    (Department of Economics, University of Virginia, PO Box 400182, Charlottesville VA 22904-4128, USA)

  • André de Palma

    (Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, ThEMA, Université de Cergy- Pontoise, 33 Bd. du Port, 95011, Cergy Cedex, France.)

Abstract

Advertising messages compete for scarce attention. “Junk” mail, “spam” e-mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message recipients supply attention depending on average message benefit, while senders are motivated by profits. Costlier message transmission may improve message quality so more messages are examined. Too many messages may be sent, or the wrong ones. A Do-Not-Call policy beats a ban, but too many individuals opt out. A monopoly gatekeeper performs better than personal access pricing if nuisance costs to receivers are moderate.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon P. Anderson & André de Palma, 2007. "Information Congestion: open access in a two-sided market," THEMA Working Papers 2007-10, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    • Handle: RePEc:ema:worpap:2007-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://thema.u-cergy.fr/IMG/documents/2007-10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon P. Anderson & Stephen Coate, 2005. "Market Provision of Broadcasting: A Welfare Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 947-972.
    2. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    3. Avinash Dixit & Victor Norman, 1978. "Advertising and Welfare," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17, Spring.
    4. Timothy Van Zandt, 2004. "Information Overload in a Network of Targeted Communication," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(3), pages 542-560, Autumn.
    5. Simon P. Anderson & Regis Renault, 1999. "Pricing, Product Diversity, and Search Costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 719-735, Winter.
    6. Engers, Maxim & Gans, Joshua S, 1998. "Why Referees Are Not Paid (Enough)," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1341-1349, December.
    7. Willmore, C., 1999. "A Penny for your Thoughts: E-Mail and the Under-Valuation of Expert Time," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 551, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    8. Willmore, Chris, 1999. "A penny for your thoughts: e-mail and the under-valuation of expert time," Economic Research Papers 269302, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    9. Bagwell, Kyle, 2007. "The Economic Analysis of Advertising," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1701-1844, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Armstrong & John Vickers & Jidong Zhou, 2009. "Consumer Protection and the Incentive to Become Informed," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 399-410, 04-05.
    2. Chokri Aloui & Khaïreddine Jebsi, 2010. "Optimal pricing of a two-sided monopoly platform with a one-sided congestion effect," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 57(4), pages 423-439, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon P. Anderson & André De Palma, 2009. "Information congestion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(4), pages 688-709, December.
    2. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    3. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2006. "Advertising Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 93-113, March.
    4. Simon P. Anderson & André de Palma, 2012. "Competition for attention in the Information (overload) Age," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 1-25, March.
    5. Alexandre de Corniere, 2013. "Search Advertising," Economics Series Working Papers 649, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Kerkhof, Anna & Münster, Johannes, 2015. "Quantity restrictions on advertising, commercial media bias, and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 124-141.
    7. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marco Ottaviani, 2013. "Hypertargeting, Limited Attention, and Privacy: Implications for Marketing and Campaigning," Working Papers 479, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    8. Levent Çelik, 2008. "Monopoly Provision of Tune-ins," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp362, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    9. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    10. Alexandre de Cornière, 2009. "Targeted advertising with consumer search: an economic analysis of keywords advertising," Working Papers halshs-00575074, HAL.
    11. Alexandre de Cornière, 2016. "Search Advertising," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 156-188, August.
    12. Dmitri Kuksov & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2010. "When More Alternatives Lead to Less Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 507-524, 05-06.
    13. Konishi, Hideo & Sandfort, Michael T., 2002. "Expanding demand through price advertisement," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 965-994, September.
    14. Levent Çelik, 2008. "Strategic Informative Advertising in a Horizontally Differentiated Duopoly," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp359, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    15. Simon P. Anderson, 2005. "Regulation of Television advertising," Virginia Economics Online Papers 363, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
    16. Creane, Anthony & Manduchi, Agostino, 2022. "Informative advertising in monopolistically competitive markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    17. Peitz, Martin & Reisinger, Markus, 2014. "The Economics of Internet Media," Working Papers 14-23, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    18. Yang, Yupin & Lu, Qiang (Steven) & Tang, Guanting & Pei, Jian, 2015. "The Impact of Market Competition on Search Advertising," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 46-55.
    19. Levent Çelik, 2008. "Viewer Sampling and Quality Signaling in a Television Market," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp363, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    20. J. K. Pappalardo, 2022. "Economics of Consumer Protection: Contributions and Challenges in Estimating Consumer Injury and Evaluating Consumer Protection Policy," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 201-238, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    information overload; congestion; advertising; common property resource; two-sided markets; junk mail; email; telemarketing; Do Not Call List; message pricing policy.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ema:worpap:2007-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Stefania Marcassa (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/themafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.