This article examines how the consumer's search cost and filtering on a retail platform affect the platform, the third-party sellers, and the consumers. We show that, given the platform's percentage referral fee, a lower search cost can either increase or lower the platform's profit. By...

This paper studies an information design problem in a sequential consumer search environment. Consumers, whose valuation of firm's products is uncertain, observe a noisy signal about the valuation upon being matched with a firm. The goal is to characterize those signal structures that maximize...

Many markets feature sequentially mixed search (SMS), which has directed search followed by noisy matching with multiple offers. I construct a simple model of SMS, establish existence of a unique equilibrium, and analyze the novel implications of the equilibrium on quantities and price...

We study sequential search without priors. Our interest lies in decision rules that are close to being optimal under each prior and after each history. We call these rules robust. The search literature employs optimal rules based on cutoff strategies, and these rules are not robust. We derive...

This paper analyzes a decentralized search and matching economy comprised of heterogeneous agents. The paper looks at a model with additive search costs and transferable utility, gives a general proof of equilibrium existence and shows that perfect assortative matching is the unique equilibrium...

This note explores asymmetries in the way consumers sample prices in a simple variation of Stahl's (1989) seminal model of sequential search. In the note, we characterize a unique equilibrium in which a firm that caters to more local consumers selects prices from a distribution which first order...

We study price formation in the standard model of consumer search for differentiated products but allow for search cost heterogeneity. In doing so, we dispense with the usual assumption that all consumers search at least once in equilibrium. This allows us to analyze the manner in which prices...

I examine the robustness of monetary equilibria in a random matching model where a more efficient mechanism for trade is available. Agents choose between two trading sectors: the search and the intermediated sector. In the former, trade partners arrive randomly and there is a trading...

We analyse consumers' search and purchase decisions on an Internet platform. Using a rich dataset on all adverts posted and transactions made on a major French Internet platform (PriceMinister), we show evidence of substantial price dispersion among adverts for the same product. We also show...

This paper develops a dynamic model of consumer search that, despite placing very little structure on the dynamic problem faced by consumers, allows us to exploit intertemporal variation in within-period price and search cost distributions to estimate the population distribution from which...