This article, analyzes the impact on consumer prices of the size and bias of price comparison search engines. we develop a model, related to Burdett and Judd (1983) and Varian (1980), and test experimentally several theoretical predictions. The experimental results confirm the model’s...

This paper presents a search model, for which a decrease in the search cost may lead to lower prices and to a lower price variance, but may also lead to the opposite. This result contrasts with some predictions about the impact of the Internet on prices, but fits well with the empirical...

This chapter provides a data-driven overview of the different online platforms that consumers use to search for books and booksellers, and documents how the use of these platforms is shifting over time. Our data suggest that, as a result of digitization, consumers are increasingly conducting...

Organic product search results on Google and Bing do not systematically include information about seller characteristics (e.g., feedback ratings and prices). Consequently, it is often assumed that a retailer’s organic traffic is driven by the prominence of its position in the list of search...

We study competition in experimental markets in which two incumbents face entry by three other firms. Our treatments vary with respect to three factors: sequential vs. block or simultaneous entry, the cost functions of entrants and the amount of time during which incumbents are protected from...

We study competition in experimental markets in which two incumbents face entry by three other firms. Our treatments vary with respect to three factors: sequential vs. block or simultaneous entry, the cost functions of entrants and the amount of time during which incumbents are protected from...

Yes, but one needs to assume that consumers know the realized price distribution, and that they do not know which firm has what price. Even with identical consumers and identical firms, if firms set prices in a first stage, and if consumers search sequentially in a second stage, then price...

I analyse a homogeneous goods framework where firms receive binary and noisy signals about consumer valuations and consumers engage in sequential search. Firms have no information about consumers' search histories in the baseline model. Different search costs give rise to structurally different...

In this paper, we study an imperfect monitoring model of duopoly under similar settings as in Green and Porter (1984), but here firms do not know the demand parameters and learn about them over time through the price signals. We investigate how a deviation from rational expectations affects the...

We consider an oligopolistic market where firms compete in price and quality and where consumers are heterogeneous in knowledge: some consumers know both the prices and quality of the products offered, some know only the prices and some know neither. We show that two types of signalling...