UCLA

I study how information is incorporated into prices. In the first two chapters, I approach this problem by studying the pricing of new products. Retailers face uncertainty about demand for new products, making it challenging to set prices. To learn about demand, retailers rely on information from similar, existing products and demand in similar markets. Thus, retailers have the least knowledge about demand for new products that are not present in any markets and have few substitutes. I show that to address uncertainty retailers launch new products into a subset of markets to learn about demand before introducing a product widely. As retailers gain additional information from similar existing products or prior introductions at other stores, they set prices closer to the optimal level. Additionally, after introducing a new product, retailers continue to learn about demand and refine their pricing strategy. Retailers learn, in part, by sharing information across their network of stores. Information sharing across different geographic regions helps retailers learn about demand if consumers are similar across locations. I find that while information sharing typically leads to prices that are closer to the optimal level, there are cases where information from different geographies has a negative impact on pricing.

In my third chapter, I take these themes in a different direction by studying pricing in financial markets from a theoretical perspective. In modern financial markets, investors seeking to profit from new information compete with high frequency traders (HFTs) who invest in the ability to trade quickly. Using a dynamic model, I find that while HFTs' speed advantage improves market liquidity (as indicated by bid-ask spreads), it also slows down the speed at which new information is incorporated into prices. HFTs decrease the profitability of new information by trading ahead of slower investors, prompting investors to trade less to avoid revealing valuable information. As a result, new information takes longer to be incorporated into prices. However, HFTs also improve market liquidity by ensuring that prices better reflect widely known information.