The search literature assumes that consumers know which firms sell products they are looking for, but are unaware of the particular variety and the prices at which each firm sells. In this paper, we consider the situation where consumers are uncertain whether a firm carries the product at all by...

We empirically test the hypothesis that the discounts offered by firms to consumers who purchase tickets in advance increase with the intensity of competition. We develop a new measure of competition for which we use the proximity (in departure time) of a given flight to its competitors to infer...

This paper develops a novel theory linking quantity discounts to bargaining power in scenarios where retailers, organized as a trade association, negotiate uniform wholesale prices with suppliers. Our theory predicts that suppliers offer greater quantity discounts in regional markets where they...

We study a consumer non-sequential search oligopoly model with search cost heterogeneity. We first prove that an equilibrium in mixed strategies always exists. We then examine the nonparametric identification and estimation of the costs of search. We find that the sequence of points on the...

We model the idea that when consumers search for products, they first visit the firm whose advertising is more salient. The gains a firm derives from being visited early increase in search costs, so equilibrium advertising increases as search costs rise. This may result in lower firm profits...

This paper analyses the role of information in the search process. Ibuild a simple model of a good with two random attributes with somejoint probability distribution. I consider seemingly unimportant changesin this distribution, i.e. changes which neither affect expected utility norits variance....

This paper presents an empirical examination of oligopoly pricingand consumer search. The theoretical model allows for sequential andnon-sequential search and using the theoretical restrictions firm andconsumer behavior impose on the data we study the empirical validity of themodels. Two...

We consider a duopoly in a homogenous goods market where part of the consumers are ex ante uninformed about prices. Information can come through two different channels: advertising and sequential consumer search. We arrive at the following results. First, there is no monotone relationship...

In a recent paper Hong and Shum [2006. Using price distributions to estimate search costs. Rand Journal of Economics 37, 257–275] present a structural method to estimate search cost distributions. We extend their approach to the case of oligopoly and present a new maximum likelihood method to...

We present an oligopoly model where a certain fraction of consumers engage in costly non-sequential search to discover prices. There are three distinct price dispersed equilibria characterized by low, moderate and high search intensity, respectively. We show that the effects of an increase in...