We analyze the impact of dealer regulation on price quality (informativeness and volatility) and its implications for the welfare of market participants. We argue that although price informativeness, volatility, and the dealer’s profitability all deteriorate, against conventional wisdom, other market participants are better off due to the dealer’s risk-shifting motive. A static model is used to clarify the main intuition, and the robustness of the welfare results, as well as the fragility of the conventional wisdom about price quality, are discussed by incorporating dynamics and endogenizing information acquisition.

This paper examines the impact of retail e-commerce on pricing behavior and welfare. Using Japanese data, we find that e-commerce lowered relative inflation rates for goods sold intensively online. We use long time series and historical catalog sales as an instrument for e-commerce sales intensity. The entry of e-commerce firms raised the rate of intercity price convergence in physical stores for goods sold intensively online, but not for other goods, which suggests e-commerce enhances price arbitrage. We estimate that e-commerce lowered variety-adjusted prices on average by 0.9% between 1996 and 2014, and more in cities with highly educated populations.