Existence and Persistence of Price Dispersion: An Empirical Analysis
利用以色列四种同质商品的月度门店价格数据，研究发现即使控制产品异质性后价格离散仍普遍存在，且门店在价格分布中频繁变动，消费者无法识别持续低价门店，导致价格离散长期持续。
Using a unique data set on store-level monthly prices of four homogenous products sold in Israel, I study the existence and characteristics of the dispersion of prices across stores, as well as its persistence over time. I find that price dispersion prevails even after controlling for observed and unobserved product heterogeneity. Moreover, intradistribution mobility is significant: stores move up and down the crosssectional price distribution. Thus, consumers cannot learn about stores that consistently post low prices. As a consequence, price dispersion does not disappear and persists over time as predicted by Varian's (1980) model of sales. © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology