We study a sequential social learning model where agents privately acquire information by costly search. Search costs … of agents are private to them, and are independently and identically distributed. We show that asymptotic learning occurs … if and only if search costs are not bounded away from zero. We explicitly characterize the speed of learning for the case …

; this generates a search rule that accounts for learning systematically. In this search environment, a multiproduct seller …

two new attributes is found. The search paths emerging from this policy match recent evidence of consumer learning through …

suggested searches, but also by customers indirectly learning to perform more effective searches on their own. …