When firms possess information about their competitors’ products, their advertisements may leak extra information. I analyze this within a duopoly television market that lasts for two periods. Each station may advertise its upcoming program by airing a tune-in during the first program. Viewers...

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...

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 study the impact of the Euro on prices charged by online retailers within the EU. Our data spans the period before and after the Euro was introduced, covers a variety of products, and includes countries inside and outside of the Eurozone. Our main finding is that the Euro changeover in 2002...

Search engines enable advertisers to target consumers based on the query they have entered. In a framework in which consumers search sequentially after having entered a query, I show that targeting reduces search costs, improves matches and intensifies price competition. However, a...

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. The model is similar to that of Robert and Stahl (1993) with two major (and some...

This paper studies a model of search engine competition with endogenous obfuscation. Platforms may differ in the quality of their search algorithms. I study the impact of this heterogeneity in consumer surplus, seller profits and platform revenue. I show that the dominant platform will typically...

We develop a theory of imperfect competition with loss-averse consumers. All consumers are fully informed about match value and price at the time they make their purchasing decision. However, a share of consumers are initially uncertain about their tastes and form a reference point consisting of...

We study the impact of the Euro on prices charged by online retailers within the EU. Our data spans the period before and after the Euro was introduced, covers a variety of products, and includes countries inside and outside of the Eurozone. After controlling for cost, demand, and market...

In this paper, we study a simple model in which two horizontally differentiated firms compete in prices and targeted advertising on an initially uninformed market. First, the Nash equilibrium is fully characterized. We prove that when the advertising cost is low, firms target only their...