Despite the existence of two vast literatures, very little is known about the potential differences or interactions between search and switching costs. This paper demonstrates the benefits of examining the two frictions in unison. First, the paper shows how subtle distinctions between the two...

Significant attention has been paid to why a durable-goods producer with little or no market power would monopolize the maintenance market for its own product. This paper provides an explanation for this practice that is based on consumer switching costs and the choice of consumers between...

By incorporating the additional existence of switching costs into an oligopoly search model by Stahl (1989), this paper dispels the misleading idea that search costs can simply be treated as a form of switching cost. Due to the assumption that search costs, unlike switching costs, are incurred...

This paper considers a two-period model of market entry with homogeneous products and switching costs. It is shown that the pro-competitive effect of a foreign firm's entry (i.e., unilateral trade liberalization) emerges before the entry. Also, conditions that are conducive to a competitive...

This essay provides an elementary, unified introduction to the impacts of transaction, search and switching costs on resource allocation in competitive markets. The emphasis is on incorporating these phenomena into models of price-taking behavior, rather than the more usual treatments with...

We build a simple model of quantity competition to analyze the effect of switching costs on equilibrium behavior of duopolists. We characterize the industry structure as a function of initial sales of two firms. Contrary to the literature, initial asymmetries persist in our model even though the...

In most liberalised electricity retail markets, incumbent firms still hold the majority of residential consumers. This situation focused the attention of regulatory institutions and energy economists on the determinants of consumers switching decisions. Fewer studies have, however, been devoted...

Consumers often incur costs when switching from one product to another. Recently there has been renewed debate within the literature about whether these switching costs lead to higher prices. We build a theoretical model of dynamic competition and solve it analytically for a wide range of...

This paper examines the relationship between individuals' weight and their employment decisions over the life cycle. I estimate a dynamic stochastic model of individuals' annual joint decisions of occupation, hours worked, and schooling. The model allows body weight to affect non-monetary costs,...

Agriculture plays an important role in the process of economic development of less developed countries like India. Besides providing food to nation, agriculture releases labour, provides saving, contributes to market of industrial goods and earns foreign exchange. Agricultural development is an...