Competitive Search for Bundles

Xiaoming Cai and Pieter A. Gautier
Additional contact information
Xiaoming Cai: Peking University HSBC Business School
Pieter A. Gautier: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

No 26-084/VI, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: How does buyers' search for bundles generate sorting among heterogeneous sellers? We study competitive search in which buyers assemble bundles through separate transactions, where prices direct search and determine congestion. With two seller types, buyers choose only same-type bundles below a single threshold in cross-type value and cross-type bundles above it. The threshold lies strictly between geometric and arithmetic means of same-type values, so search produces cross-type matching even when types are complements. With a continuum of types, log-supermodularity and submodularity yield unique stable equilibria with positive and negative assortative matching. Positive sorting extends to any fixed number of visits.

Keywords: competitive search; search for bundles; assortative matching; seller heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-des
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/26084.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260084

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().