It is well known that search costs and switching costs can create market power by constraining the ability of consumers to change suppliers. While previous research has examined each cost in isolation, this paper demonstrates the benefits of examining the two types of friction in unison. The...

This paper demonstrates the incentives for an oligopolist to obfuscate by deliberately increasing the cost with which consumers can locate its product and price. Consumers are allowed to choose the optimal order in which to search firms and firms are able to influence this order through their...

This paper demonstrates that the ability of consumers to choose the best alternative supplier is limited even in a relatively simple and transparent market. Across two independent datasets from the UK electricity market we find, on aggregate, that those consumers switching exclusively for price...

We develop a decision framework with imperfect information to analyze the effects of transaction costs on the tendency for individuals to remain with a default option. We demonstrate how transaction costs can be a more important source of such default effects than commonly thought. A further,...