This paper is the first to examine the effect of minimum price guaranteesin a sequential search model. Minimum price guarantees are notadvertised and only known to consumers when they come to the shop.We show that in such an environment, minimum price guarantees increasethe value of buying the...

This paper studies the incentives to merge in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiatedproducts and consumers search for satisfactory deals. In the pre-merger symmetricequilibrium, the probability that a firm is the next one to be visited by a consumer is equal acrossfirms not...

This paper is the first to examine the effect of minimum price guaranteesin a sequential search model. Minimum price guarantees are notadvertised and only known to consumers when they come to the shop.We show that in such an environment, minimum price guarantees increasethe value of buying the...

There is an extensive literature studying the welfare comparison of third-degree price discrimination vs. uniform pricing, typically under the assumption that all markets are served under uniform pricing. In this study, we allow market foreclosure and show that the welfare comparison of price...

This paper examines the output effect of third-degree price discrimination in symmetrically differentiated oligopoly. We find that when the sellers' input costs are chosen endogenously by an upstream supplier with market power, as opposed to being fixed exogenously, long-standing qualitative...

This paper introduces a notion of partial secrecy in bilateral contracting games between one upstream firm and several competing downstream firms. The supplier’s offer quantities are subject to trembles, and each downstream firm observes a noisy signal about the offer received by its...

Online review aggregators (e.g., booking dot com or ClubKviar) provide detailed information about experience goods, such as restaurants and hotels. This study fosters the understanding of how such aggregators modify competition, profits and welfare. Using a spokes model of horizontal...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...

Platforms often display their products ahead of third-party products in search. Is this due to consumers preferring platform-owned products or platforms engaging in self-preferencing by biasing search towards their own products? What are the welfare implications? I develop a structural model of...