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Optimal Product Design: Implications for Competition and Growth under Declining Search Frictions

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  • Guido Menzio

Abstract

As search frictions become smaller in the market for a consumer product, buyers are able to locate and access more sellers per unit of time. In response, sellers choose to design varieties of the product that are more specialized in order to exploit differences in the buyers' preferences. I find mild conditions on the fundamentals under which the decline in search frictions and the increase in specialization have exactly offsetting effects on the extent of competition in the market. Under these conditions, price dispersion remains constant over time even though search frictions are vanishing. Buyer's surplus and seller's profit, however, grow at a constant endogenous rate, as the endogenous increase in specialization allows sellers to cater better and better to the heterogeneous desires of buyers.

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  • Guido Menzio, 2021. "Optimal Product Design: Implications for Competition and Growth under Declining Search Frictions," NBER Working Papers 28638, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28638
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    Cited by:

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    3. Xiaoming Cai & Pieter Gautier & Ronald Wolthoff & Pieter A. Gautier, 2024. "Spatial Search," CESifo Working Paper Series 10978, CESifo.
    4. Salome Baslandze & Jeremy Greenwood & Ricardo Marto & Sara Moreira, 2023. "The Expansion of Varieties in the New Age of Advertising," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 50, pages 171-210, October.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

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