Search and ripoff externalities

Mark Armstrong

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper surveys models of markets in which only some consumers are "savvy". I discuss when the presence of savvy consumers improves the deals available to all consumers in the market (the case of search externalities), and when the non-savvy fund generous deals for all consumers (ripoff externalities). I also discuss when the two groups of consumers have aligned or divergent views about market interventions. The analysis focusses on two kinds of models: (i) an indivisible product in a market with price dispersion, and (ii) products which involve add-on pricing.

Keywords: Add-on pricing; bounded rationality; consumer protection; consumer search; externalities; price dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D18 D4 D83 D86 L1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cta, nep-mic and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/62012/1/MPRA_paper_62012.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Search and Ripoff Externalities (2015)
Working Paper: Search and Ripoff Externalities (2014)
Working Paper: Search and Ripoff Externalities (2014)
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:pra:mprapa:62012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().