Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy
Name
2aed6403ba097fa5d63cf371153683509654.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
660.66 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f7a5aed6cbe4040367e9cf414914fa9f
Author(s)
Ellison, Glenn
Ellison, Sara Fisher
Date Issued
2018
Journal
Innovation Policy and the Economy
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. All rights reserved. Technologies, especially the Internet, have transformed how consumers search for products and prices. Price search has become cheap and easy and, therefore, ubiquitous, for many products. Just as technologies have made price search easier, however, they have increased incentives that firms have to obfuscate, or make price search harder. In this article, we focus on these actions that firms take and their effects on market participants. We discuss empirical evidence on this phenomenon, as well as its welfare impacts in the context of theories of search and obfuscation. Finally, we offer a framework for thinking about policy interventions based on this welfare analysis and outline some of the challenges facing policymakers.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1086/694405
