Consumer search and dynamic price dispersion: an application to gasoline markets
利用美国零售汽油行业的面板数据，研究不完全信息如何导致价格离散，发现价格排名随时间变化显著，但同一街口的加油站更稳定，且价格离散随企业数量增加、生产成本降低、搜索成本增加而上升。
This article studies the role of imperfect information in explaining price dispersion. We use a new panel data set on the U.S. retail gasoline industry and propose a new test of temporal price dispersion to establish the importance of consumer search. We show that price rankings vary significantly over time; however, they are more stable among stations at the same street intersection. We establish the equilibrium relationships between price dispersion and key variables from consumer search models. Price dispersion increases with the number of firms in the market, decreases with the production cost, and increases with search costs.