Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Pricing, product diversity, and search costs: a Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond model

Contents:

Author Info

  • Simon P. Anderson

    ()

  • Regis Renault

    ()

Abstract

We study price competition in the presence of search costs and product differentiation. The limit cases of the model are the ‘‘Bertrand Paradox,’’ the ‘‘Diamond Paradox,’’ and Chamberlinian monopolistic competition. Market prices rise with search costs and decrease with the number of firms. Prices may initially fall with the degree of product differentiation because more diversity leads to more search and hence more competition. Equilibrium diversity rises with search costs, while the optimum level falls, so entry is excessive. The market failure is most pronounced for low preference for variety and high search costs.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://www.virginia.edu/economics/RePEc/vir/virpap/papers/virpap335.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Virginia, Department of Economics in its series Virginia Economics Online Papers with number 335.

as in new window
Length: 17 pages
Date of creation: Jan 1999
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:vir:virpap:335

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.virginia.edu/economics/home.html

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Perloff, Jeffrey M & Salop, Steven, 1984. "Equilibrium with product differentiation," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt4cq0m6s3, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
  2. Steven C. Salop, 1979. "Monopolistic Competition with Outside Goods," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 141-156, Spring.
  3. Anderson, Simon P & de Palma, Andre & Nesterov, Yurii, 1995. "Oligopolistic Competition and the Optimal Provision of Products," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1281-1301, November.
  4. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
  5. Anderson, Simon P & Renault, Regis, 2000. "Consumer Information and Firm Pricing: Negative Externalities from Improved Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(3), pages 721-42, August.
  6. Deneckere, Raymond J & Rothschild, Michael, 1992. "Monopolistic Competition and Preference Diversity," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 361-73, April.
  7. Kohn, Meir G. & Shavell, Steven, 1974. "The theory of search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 93-123, October.
  8. Wolinsky, Asher, 1984. "Product Differentiation with Imperfect Information," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 53-61, January.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vir:virpap:335

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Debby Stanford).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.