Arbeitspapier

A Note on Costly Sequential Search and Oligopoly Pricing

We modify the paper of Stahl (1989) [Stahl, D.O., 1989. Oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search. American Economic Review 79, 700–12] by relaxing the assumption that consumers obtain the first price quotation for free. When all price quotations are costly to obtain, the unique symmetric equilibrium need not involve full consumer participation. The region of parameters for which non-shoppers do not fully participate in the market becomes larger as the number of shoppers decreases and/or the number of firms increases. The comparative statics properties of this new type of equilibrium are interesting. In particular, expected price increases as search cost decreases and is constant in the number of shoppers and in the number of firms. Welfare falls as firms enter the market. We show that monopoly pricing never obtains with truly costly search.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper ; No. 04-068/1

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Estimation: General
Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: General
Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
Thema
sequential consumer search
oligopoly
price dispersion
Informationskosten
Oligopol
Suchtheorie

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Janssen, Maarten C.W.
Moraga-Gonzalez, Jose Luis
Wildenbeest, Matthijs R.
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Tinbergen Institute
(wo)
Amsterdam and Rotterdam
(wann)
2004

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
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Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Janssen, Maarten C.W.
  • Moraga-Gonzalez, Jose Luis
  • Wildenbeest, Matthijs R.
  • Tinbergen Institute

Entstanden

  • 2004

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