Search costs, demand‐side economies, and the incentives to merge under Bertrand competition
研究了在伯特兰竞争模型中，当消费者进行顺序搜索时，企业合并的激励及其总体影响，发现搜索摩擦较大时合并可能提高效率并增加福利。
We study the incentives to merge and the aggregate implications of mergers in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiated products and consumers search sequentially for satisfactory deals. When search frictions are substantial, firms have an incentive to merge and to retail their products within a single store, which induces consumers to begin their search there. Such a merger lowers the profits of the outsiders and may benefit consumers due to more efficient search. Overall welfare may even increase. If the merged entity limits itself to coordinating the prices of the constituent firms, merging may not be profitable.