Search with Learning and Price Adjustment Dynamics

Abstract

We present a model of consumer search with learning in which cost shocks have different short- and long-range effects on prices. In the short run, consumers confuse general cost shocks, common to all firms in the industry, with firm-specific shocks. In the case of a general cost increase, this promotes an excessive propensity to search, restraining the amount by which prices increase in the short run. Conversely, in the case of an idiosyncratic cost increase, consumers search too little, causing the prices of high-cost firms to overshoot.