This note analyzes the repeated interaction among buyers of a homogeneous good, in a setting of imperfect buyer mobility. The buyers are assumed to play a dynamic game of imperfect information: at each stage every buyer chooses which seller to visit without knowing the current and past choices of the other buyers. A norm of conditional loyalty might prevail, according to which buyers keep loyal if previously served. Under generalized conditional loyalty, an efficient allocation is certainly reached in a finite number of stages. There is a clear case for boundedly rational buyers to keep conditionally loyal. And, most importantly, for the two-seller case we are able to establish adherence to a strategy of conditional loyalty as an “assessment equilibrium” of the dynamic buyer game.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Economics Bulletin in its journal Economics Bulletin.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory L0 - Industrial Organization - - General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994.
"A Course in Game Theory,"
MIT Press Books,
The MIT Press,
edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401.
Other versions: