{"id":1976,"date":"2019-09-06T12:48:31","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T19:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2026-08-24T10:31:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T17:31:32","slug":"price-competition-consumer-search-working-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/2019\/09\/06\/price-competition-consumer-search-working-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition Against Itself: Search Dilution and Inactivation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Koh, Yumi, Gea M. Lee,<b>\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Gene Moo Lee<\/span> (2026) <\/b>&#8220;Competition Against Itself:\u00a0Search Dilution and Inactivation&#8221;. <em>Working Paper. <\/em>[Latest version: August 2026] [<a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3467893\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SSRN<\/a>]<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Presented at <a href=\"http:\/\/apios.org.au\/program-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">APIOC 2019<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/earie.org\/earie-2023-rome\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EARIE 2023<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Previous title: Price Competition and Consumer Search<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\">When does competition discipline prices? The answer depends on how consumer\u00a0search responds to competition. We develop an incomplete-information model where firms price under private cost heterogeneity and consumers choose between immediate\u00a0purchase and sequential search. Search regimes&#8211;inactive or active&#8211;emerge endogenously\u00a0from cost heterogeneity, the search cost, and market thickness. Under inactive\u00a0search, competition can trigger a search-dilution effect that pushes the expected price\u00a0upward. Under active search, competition instead erodes price dispersion as the market\u00a0thickens, causing the regime to contract or collapse. Either way, competition can\u00a0thus undermine the very search channel of price discipline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Koh, Yumi, Gea M. Lee,\u00a0Gene Moo Lee (2026) &#8220;Competition Against Itself:\u00a0Search Dilution and Inactivation&#8221;. Working Paper. [Latest version: August 2026] [SSRN] Presented at APIOC 2019 and EARIE 2023 Previous title: Price Competition and Consumer Search When does competition discipline prices? The answer depends on how consumer\u00a0search responds to competition. We develop an incomplete-information model where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45231],"tags":[379631,45244,45274,45243,45242,964602,45238,4381944,45239,535,45240],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-working-papers","tag-big-data","tag-clickstream","tag-e-commerce","tag-heterogeneous-production-costs","tag-incomplete-information","tag-industrial-organization","tag-price-dispersion","tag-product-level","tag-random-search","tag-search","tag-sequential-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4724,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/4724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/genemoolee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}