Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy
© 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. All rights reserved. Technologies, especially the Internet, have transformed how consumers search for products and prices. Price search has become cheap and easy and, therefore, ubiquitous, for many products. Just as technologies have made price se...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Chicago Press
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134922 |
| _version_ | 1811086865471635456 |
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| author | Ellison, Glenn Ellison, Sara Fisher |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Ellison, Glenn Ellison, Sara Fisher |
| author_sort | Ellison, Glenn |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. All rights reserved. Technologies, especially the Internet, have transformed how consumers search for products and prices. Price search has become cheap and easy and, therefore, ubiquitous, for many products. Just as technologies have made price search easier, however, they have increased incentives that firms have to obfuscate, or make price search harder. In this article, we focus on these actions that firms take and their effects on market participants. We discuss empirical evidence on this phenomenon, as well as its welfare impacts in the context of theories of search and obfuscation. Finally, we offer a framework for thinking about policy interventions based on this welfare analysis and outline some of the challenges facing policymakers. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:35:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/134922 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:35:35Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | University of Chicago Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1349222023-02-23T20:55:56Z Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy Ellison, Glenn Ellison, Sara Fisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics © 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. All rights reserved. Technologies, especially the Internet, have transformed how consumers search for products and prices. Price search has become cheap and easy and, therefore, ubiquitous, for many products. Just as technologies have made price search easier, however, they have increased incentives that firms have to obfuscate, or make price search harder. In this article, we focus on these actions that firms take and their effects on market participants. We discuss empirical evidence on this phenomenon, as well as its welfare impacts in the context of theories of search and obfuscation. Finally, we offer a framework for thinking about policy interventions based on this welfare analysis and outline some of the challenges facing policymakers. 2021-10-27T20:09:52Z 2021-10-27T20:09:52Z 2018 2019-10-22T17:02:01Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134922 en 10.1086/694405 Innovation Policy and the Economy Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf University of Chicago Press Other repository |
| spellingShingle | Ellison, Glenn Ellison, Sara Fisher Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title | Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title_full | Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title_fullStr | Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title_short | Search and Obfuscation in a Technologically Changing Retail Environment: Some Thoughts on Implications and Policy |
| title_sort | search and obfuscation in a technologically changing retail environment some thoughts on implications and policy |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134922 |
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