Beneficial consumer fraud

This article considers a two-sided private information model. We assume that two exogenouslygiven qualities are offered in a monopolistic market. Prices are fixed. A low quality seller choosesto be either honest (by charging the lower market price) or dishonest (by charging the higherprice). We discuss the signalling role of consumers’ information on the equilibrium level ofdishonesty, incidence of fraud and trade. We demonstrate that the equilibrium incidence offraud is non-monotonic in information. This result holds as long as information is noisy andregardless of its private or public nature. Welfare consequences are ambiguous.