We develop models of markets with procrastinating consumers where competition operates - or is supposed to operate - both through the initial selection of providers and through the possibility of switching providers. As in other work, consumers fail to switch to better options after signing up...

This paper sheds light on an empirical controversy about the effect of competition on price discrimination. We introduce individual demand uncertainty into Hotelling’s model of product differentiation and show that firms offer advance purchase discounts. Consumers choose between an early...

This paper sheds light on a recent empirical controversy about the effect of competition on price discrimination in airline markets (Borenstein and Rose (1994), Gerardi and Shapiro, (2009)). We introduce individual demand uncertainty into Hotelling’s model of horizontal product differentiation...

Undergraduate economic students usually learn different models of duopoly competition: Cournot, Bertrand, Cournot-Stackelberg, Bertrand-Stackelberg and joint profit maximization. While the textbooks usually claim that different models lead to different levels of competitiveness, there does not...

This paper extends the traditional Hotelling's model of spatial competition by allowing firms to choose the degree of general purposeness of their products before they compete in prices. The degree of general purposeness is approximated by endogenizing the per-unit transportation cost...

The present paper is concerned with providing a core model to address the issue of firms simultaneously competing in both prices and quantities (capacity levels) within a simple duopoly market setting where products are asymmetrically differentiated by endogenous quality location. A three-stage...

Dynamic pricing is increasingly popular in the perishable good markets, but its effect under competition is uncertain due to the potential for the prisoner's dilemma. I study profit and welfare implications of dynamic pricing techniques in a competitive setting. I construct a structural dynamic...

We investigate the impact of consumer search and competition on pricing strategies in Germany’s electricity retail. We utilize a unique panel dataset on spatially varying search requests at major online price comparison websites to construct a direct measure of search intensity and combine...

When firms' shrouding of charges, as in Gabaix and Laibson (2006), meets with consumers' salient thinking, as in Bordalo et al. (2013), this can have severe welfare implications. The ensuing excessive competition for headline prices tends to inefficiently bias consumers' choice towards...