IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/edn/esedps/1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Dispersion: An Evolutionary Approach

Author

Listed:

Abstract

In many markets it is possible to find rival sellers charging different prices for the same good. Earlier research has explained this phenomenon by demonstrating the existence of dispersed price equilibria when consumers must make use of costly search to discover prices. Taking as a starting point the model of Burdett and Judd (Econometrica, 1983), this paper, extending evolutionary techniques to a game with non-linear payoffs and a continuum of strategies, re-examines the question of price dispersion from an evolutionary, disequilibrium perspective. That is, firms and consumers adjust behaviour adaptively in response to current market conditions. We find that dispersed price equilibria are unstable when consumers use a fixed sample size search rule but may be stable when a reservation price rule is used.

Suggested Citation

  • Ed Hopkins & Robert M. Seymour, 1996. "Price Dispersion: An Evolutionary Approach," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 1, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    • Handle: RePEc:edn:esedps:1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id1_esedps.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 689-711, July/Aug..
    2. Fudenberg Drew & Kreps David M., 1993. "Learning Mixed Equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 320-367, July.
    3. Steven Salop & Joseph Stiglitz, 1977. "Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 493-510.
    4. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    5. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    6. Hopkins, Ed, 1999. "Learning, Matching, and Aggregation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 79-110, January.
    7. Wilde, Louis L, 1992. "Comparison Shopping as a Simultaneous Move Game," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(412), pages 562-569, May.
    8. Morgan, Peter & Manning, Richard, 1985. "Optimal Search," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 923-944, July.
    9. Helmut Bester, 1988. "Bargaining, Search Costs and Equilibrium Price Distributions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(2), pages 201-214.
    10. Fershtman, Chaim & Fishman, Arthur, 1992. "Price Cycles and Booms: Dynamic Search Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1221-1233, December.
    11. Kandori, Michihiro & Mailath, George J & Rob, Rafael, 1993. "Learning, Mutation, and Long Run Equilibria in Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(1), pages 29-56, January.
    12. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-969, July.
    13. Talmain, Gabriel, 1992. "Search from an unkown distribution an explicit solution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 141-157.
    14. Rothschild, Michael, 1973. "Models of Market Organization with Imperfect Information: A Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(6), pages 1283-1308, Nov.-Dec..
    15. Carlson, John A & McAfee, R Preston, 1983. "Discrete Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(3), pages 480-493, June.
    16. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    17. Benabou Roland, 1993. "Search Market Equilibrium, Bilateral Heterogeneity, and Repeat Purchases," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 140-158, June.
    18. Harrison, Glenn W & Morgan, Peter, 1990. "Search Intensity in Experiments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 478-486, June.
    19. Michael Rothschild, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown: A Summary," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 3, number 1, pages 293-294, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Joseph L. Gastwirth, 1976. "On Probabilistic Models of Consumer Search for Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(1), pages 38-50.
    21. Louis L. Wilde & Alan Schwartz, 1979. "Equilibrium Comparison Shopping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(3), pages 543-553.
    22. Nachbar, J H, 1990. ""Evolutionary" Selection Dynamics in Games: Convergence and Limit Properties," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 19(1), pages 59-89.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. JÃrg Oechssler & Frank Riedel, 2001. "Evolutionary dynamics on infinite strategy spaces," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 17(1), pages 141-162.
    2. Hopkins, Ed, 1999. "A Note on Best Response Dynamics," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 138-150, October.
    3. Robert Jump, 2013. "Results on the Stability of a Simple Wage Posting Model," Studies in Economics 1319, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    4. Kirman, Alan P. & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2001. "Evolving market structure: An ACE model of price dispersion and loyalty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(3-4), pages 459-502, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ed Hopkins & Robert M. Seymour, 2002. "The Stability of Price Dispersion under Seller and Consumer Learning," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1157-1190, November.
    2. repec:smu:ecowpa:1301 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Sneha Bakshi, 2020. "Limits of price competition: cost asymmetry and imperfect information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(4), pages 913-932, December.
    4. Rauh, Michael T., 2009. "Strategic complementarities and search market equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 959-978, July.
    5. Alfredo Martín-Oliver & Vicente Salas-Fumás & Jesús Saurina, 2005. "Interest rate dispersion in deposit and loan markets," Working Papers 0506, Banco de España.
    6. Cason, Timothy N. & Friedman, Daniel, 2003. "Buyer search and price dispersion: a laboratory study," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 232-260, October.
    7. Ralph B. Siebert & Michael J. Seiler, 2022. "Why Do Buyers Pay Different Prices for Comparable Products? A Structural Approach on the Housing Market," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 261-292, August.
    8. Sergey MALAKHOV, 2016. "Law of One Price and Optimal Consumption-Leisure Choice Under Price Dispersion," Expert Journal of Economics, Sprint Investify, vol. 4(1), pages 1-8.
    9. Stahl, Dale O., 1996. "Oligopolistic pricing with heterogeneous consumer search," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 243-268.
    10. Xing Zhang & Tat Y. Chan & Ying Xie, 2018. "Price Search and Periodic Price Discounts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(2), pages 495-510, February.
    11. Backus, Matthew R. & Podwol, Joseph Uri & Schneider, Henry S., 2014. "Search costs and equilibrium price dispersion in auction markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 173-192.
    12. Anania, Giovanni & Nisticò, Rosanna, 2014. "Price dispersion and seller heterogeneity in retail food markets," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 190-201.
    13. Fishman, Arthur, 1992. "Search Technology, Staggered Price-Setting, and Price Dispersion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 287-298, March.
    14. Donna, Javier D. & Schenone, Pablo & Veramendi, Gregory F., 2020. "Networks, frictions, and price dispersion," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 406-431.
    15. Pedro Cosme Costa Vieira, 2004. "Market equilibrium with FSS search," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 323-324.
    16. Giovanni Anania & Rosanna Nisticò, 2011. "Price Dispersion, Search Costs And Consumers And Sellers Heterogeneity In Retail Food Markets," Working Papers 201105, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    17. Maarten Janssen & Paul Pichler & Simon Weidenholzer, 2009. "Sequential Search with Incompletely Informed Consumers: Theory and Evidence from Retail Gasoline Markets," Vienna Economics Papers 0914, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    18. Vladimir Yankov, 2014. "In Search of a Risk-free Asset," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-108, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:849-919 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. ANDERSON, Simon & de PALMA, André, 2003. "Price dispersion," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2003032, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    21. Sandholm, William H., 2015. "Population Games and Deterministic Evolutionary Dynamics," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    22. José Tudón, 2021. "Can price dispersion be supported solely by information frictions?," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 9(1), pages 75-90, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:edn:esedps:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Research Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deediuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.