Price Dispersion in an Automobile Insurance Market
基于1974-81年加拿大阿尔伯塔省汽车保险数据，发现保费在驾驶员类别间高度相关，但同一类别保费长期不相关；市场份额与保费偏离均值负相关，价格离散源于消费者搜寻成本。
From automobile insurance data for Alberta over the period 1974-81, we find thatpremiums are highly correlated across driver classes in a given year, but that premiums for a given driver class are not correlated over a period of more than 5 years. Firms' relative market shares among drivers over age 25 and married males under 25 are inversely related to their deviations from the mean premiums.In these driver classes, the variance of real premiums decreases with the numberof firms in the market and increases with the real loss cost per car insured and the number of cars insured. From these results we conclude that the price dispersion in automobile insurance in Alberta is based on costly consumer search.