This is a study of the nature and prevalence of persistent fraud in a competitive market for credence-quality goods. We model the market as a stochastic game of incomplete information in which the players are customers and suppliers and analyze their equilibrium behavior. Customers characteristics, idiosyncratic search cost and discount rate, are private information. Customers do not possess the expertise necessary to assess the service they need either ex ante or ex post. We show that there exists no fraud-free equilibrium in the markets for credence-quality goods and that fraud is a prevalent and persistent equilibrium phenomenon.

中文翻译：

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信用商品市场中的竞争均衡欺诈

这是一项关于信用质量商品竞争市场中持续欺诈的性质和普遍性的研究。我们将市场建模为不完全信息的随机博弈，其中参与者是客户和供应商，并分析他们的均衡行为。客户特征、特殊搜索成本和折扣率是私人信息。客户不具备评估他们需要的事前或事后服务所需的专业知识。我们表明，信用质量商品市场中不存在无欺诈均衡，欺诈是一种普遍且持续的均衡现象。