Coasian Dynamics in Sequential Search

Eeva Mauring and Cole Williams

No 17907, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Consumer-tracking technology offers new tools for price discrimination in digital markets. We examine the impact of sellers using this technology to adjust prices according to a buyer’s prior search length in a competitive search market where buyers differ in their patience. We find a “Coasian equilibrium†wherein sellers reduce prices for buyers with longer search lengths which in turn requires them to reduce prices for buyers with shorter search lengths. There is a Coasian equilibrium that not only yields higher welfare for every buyer than all uniform-pricing equilibria, but is also the unique symmetric equilibrium when some mass of buyers are arbitrarily patient.

Keywords: Coase conjecture; Sequential search; Price discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 D83 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17907 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:17907

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17907

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().