Workshop Consumer Search and Switching Costs

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics

Date: February 23, 2006

Local organizer and workshop chair:
Maarten Janssen, Erasmus University Rotterdam

The objective of the workshop is to get a better understanding of the important role of consumers in creating competitive markets. The standard economic literature assumes consumers always make perfectly rational choices, can gain information costlessly and switch between firms costlessly. We know from the literature on bounded rationality, consumer search and switching costs that when one of these assumptions fails, consumers may actually behave in very many different ways. In the workshop three papers are presented to evaluate the importance of these alternative ways of thinking about consumer behavior while reforming markets.

PROGRAM

13.00 Welcome and Introduction

13.30 Paper “Consumer Switching Costs and Optimal Antitrust Policy” by Prof. Mike Waldman (Cornell University), presented by Maarten Janssen

> click here for paper
> click for presentation by Prof. Maarten Janssen

Discussion round 1

14.30 Prof. Yongmin Chen (University of Colorado) “Dynamic Price Discrimination with Asymmetric Firms”

> click here for paper

> click here for presentation by Prof. Yongmin Chen

Discussion round 2

Break

16.00 Prof. Jose-Luis Moraga-Gonzalez (University of Groningen)
“Estimation of Search Costs”

> Click here for paper