Feasible Search Behavior

Hiroto Sato and Ryo Shirakawa

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Consider a situation wherein a decision maker sequentially searches for the best alternative among heterogeneous options with an arbitrary search order. The agent partially learns the value of an option when inspecting it. The information structure jointly determines the ex-ante and ex-post value of investigating each option, thereby shaping the entire learning path. We characterize the set of all search behaviors compatible with some information structure, which forms a polytope. A single information structure rationalizes all these search behaviors, which minimizes the agent's welfare among all information structures. Under certain symmetry assumption over primitives, we also examine the set of all feasible pairs of search and choice behaviors, with and without option sellers' price competition, and prove the same results. Our study not only provides a simple framework for analyzing how information shapes ordered learning paths, but also offers sharp insights into information design and identification problems in such environments.

Date: 2026-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.16431 Latest version (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:arx:papers:2609.16431

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().