Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy

This paper studies obfuscation decisions by firms. We show that more prominent firms are more likely to obfuscate. While prominent firms always choose maximum obfuscation, the obfuscation by less prominent firms depends on the degree of asymmetry in prominence and consumer protection policy. We evaluate the impact of a consumer protection policy that limits the scope of obfuscation. We show that such a policy may not be effective as less prominent firms may increase their obfuscation practice.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  Journal of Industrial Economics

• Publication date

  2014-12-01

• Fields of study

  Law, Business, Economics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/JOIE.12060
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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