Can a decline in search cost increase prices?
研究消费者价格搜索成本下降为何不一定导致价格降低，发现双寡头市场中搜索成本与市场势力存在非单调关系，搜索成本低于临界值时企业可能更频繁地收取高价。
Abstract This paper provides a new explanation of why a decline in consumers’ price search cost may not lead to lower prices. In a duopoly with price competition, I show that when some consumers are captive to one firm, there may be a non‐monotonic relationship between search cost and market power; firms may charge high prices with higher probability and the average price charged may be higher when consumers’ price search cost falls below a critical level. Furthermore, when firms have asymmetric captive segments, expected prices charged by each firm may move in opposite directions as search cost declines.