Objective
In real-world markets consumers face search and switching costs. These costs have received significant theoretical consideration in separate literatures. The received wisdom is that search and switching costs have pervasive consequences in markets because they confer market power to the firms. As a result, prices are often dispersed and higher than what are desirable from a welfare standpoint.
Despite a significant theoretical effort, search and switching costs are to a large extent ignored when it comes to competition policy and antitrust economics. There are at least three reasons for this omission.
One, existing work has largely focused on specific market structures, namely markets with infinitely many firms (search cost literature) or duopolistic (switching cost literature) and therefore has failed to examine oligopolistic market structures (markets with a finite and arbitrary number of firms), far more reaching in real-world markets and central to antitrust economics.
Two, the work on identification and quantification of search and switching costs is practically inexistent.
Three, in many markets search and switching costs operate at a time and there is no prior work considering both search and switching costs together. This project at developing a series of demand and supply (market) models of the interaction of firms and consumers and corresponding econometrics methods to estimate search and switching costs. As such, the results of the project should be of interest to regulatory and antitrust authorities, in particular in the EU. The Team Leader, a proven high-potential researcher in the field of microeconomics, will form a research Team by combining skills from the fields of economics, mathematics/game theory and statistics/econometrics.
The Department of Economics of the University of Groningen, as host organisation, will offer the research group a unique research environment, infrastructure and network to drive the research to scientific excellence.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciences economics and business economics econometrics
- social sciences economics and business economics microeconomics
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels fossil energy natural gas
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics game theory
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP6-2005-MOBILITY-8
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
GRONINGEN
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.