This paper explores the welfare implications of free entry when firms face known entry costs, but production costs are privately known. Upon entering, firms compete in prices to supply a homogeneous good. Our framework yields results that are more nuanced than those of the literature on social efficiency and entry, where there is either insufficient or excessive entry for all parameter values. With asymmetric information, depending on the distribution of costs, and the magnitude of entry costs, it is possible to have both excessive and insufficient entry, as well as the optimal level of entry. We also show that the existence of entry costs fundamentally changes one of the key results of Spulber (J Ind Econ 43(1):1–11) on the convergence of the equilibrium price to the competitive equilibrium.

本文探讨了当企业面临已知的进入成本，但生产成本是私下知道的时候，自由进入对福利的影响。进入时，企业竞争价格以提供同类商品。我们的框架所产生的结果比关于社会效率和进入的文献更加微妙，因为在社会效率和进入方面，所​​有参数值都不足或过多。利用不对称信息，取决于成本的分布和进入成本的大小，可能同时出现过多和不足的进入，以及最佳进入水平。我们还表明，进入成本的存在从根本上改变了Spulber的关键结果之一（J Ind Econ 43（1）：1-11），其结果是均衡价格收敛于竞争均衡。