COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 709

"Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality"

Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts

June 1984

We present a signalling model, based on ideas of Phillip Nelson, in which both the introductory price and the level of directly "uninformative" advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a newly introduced experience good. Repeat purchases play a crucial role in our model.

JEL Classification: 026, 611, 530

See CFP 676