Collusion with costly consumer search

I use standard consumer search models to study how an increase in market transparency (lower search costs or higher share of fully informed consumers) affects cartel stability. When firms sell horizontally differentiated products, cartels become more stable as the search cost increases; with homogen...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Petrikaité, Vaiva
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/133473
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/133473
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Collusion
Sequential search
Homogeneous products
Horizontal differentiation
Search costs
Cartel
Descripción
Sumario:I use standard consumer search models to study how an increase in market transparency (lower search costs or higher share of fully informed consumers) affects cartel stability. When firms sell horizontally differentiated products, cartels become more stable as the search cost increases; with homogeneous products, by contrast, the opposite holds. A higher share of fully informed consumers makes collusion less stable when the market is initially sufficiently transparent, whereas it happens otherwise if the market is originally little transparent.