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WEALTH AS A SIGNAL IN THE SEARCH MODEL OF MONEY*
Author(s) -
Okumura Tsunao
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2354.2006.00373.x
Subject(s) - quality (philosophy) , economics , welfare , signal (programming language) , microeconomics , monetary economics , business , computer science , market economy , philosophy , epistemology , programming language
This article investigates the possibility that wealth (holdings of money) serves as a signal of the ability to produce high‐quality products for agents who cannot directly observe the quality of the products. A producer's wealth may advertise past success in selling products to agents who knew the producer's ability and thus signal its ability. This analysis shows that such signaling effects may arise in equilibrium and may lead to more unequal distributions of wealth and lower welfare than would otherwise arise.