Heterogeneous Consumer Search and Social Learning: Empirical Studies

异质消费者搜索和社交学习：实证研究

• 批准号: 0079201
• 负责人: Alan Sorensen
• 金额: $ 10.24万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-08-01 至 2003-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0079201&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Heterogeneous; Consumer; Search; Social; Learning

This pair of research projects explores two aspects of consumer demand that can have important implications for market efficiency: heterogeneous consumer search and social learning. Both projects make use of new datasets that are uniquely well-suited for the questions to be addressed. The first project examines the nature and intensity of consumer search in retail markets for prescription drugs. Retail prices for prescription drugs vary widely across pharmacies even within the same local market, and previous research has shown that patterns in price dispersion are consistent with economic models of consumer search: for instance, prices tend to be much less disperse for medications that are purchased repeatedly (for which the incentives to price-shop are strongest) than for one-time medications. This project will investigate data on over 200,000 prescription purchases in two small cities. For each transaction, the data identify the actual price and payment type (cash, third-party insurance, or Medicaid) as well as prescription characteristics. Since data are available on prices and quantities at all competing pharmacies, information about the extent of consumer search is revealed in the observed sensitivity of market shares to relative price differences. The research will provide answers to important questions about price dispersion and consumer search: How intense is consumer search in these markets (i.e., what fraction of consumers chooses to price-shop before purchasing?) Is variation in search intensity across drugs consistent with the predictions of economic theories of consumer search? What do the estimated search intensities reveal about the underlying distribution of search costs? The second project concerns the impact of social learning on individuals' choices of health insurance plans. Employees of large firms typically choose from a set of health insurance options sponsored by their employer; since the choice of a health plan can be a complex decision, individuals may attempt to learn about plans' relative qualities from co-workers-either through direct communication or by drawing inferences based observed choices. The causes and consequences of this kind of learning have been formalized and discussed in the theoretical literature, but little effort has been made to measure the importance of social learning empirically. This study will use data on the health plan choices of the employees of a major university to obtain quantitative estimates of the effects of social learning. Information about employee demographics--and especially the departments in which they work-will be used in identifying the communication channels through which learning occurs. Stated very simply, if individuals' decisions are significantly more similar within departments than they are across departments, this can be taken as suggestive of a learning or "herding" effect. This is the basic idea underlying the project's principal approach, which is to estimate an econometric model of health plan choice that incorporates the influence of neighbors' decisions on the decision of the individual. The empirical results will yield important insights into the nature and extent of learning, the implications for demand analysis and health plan competition, and the magnitude of potential welfare losses due to imitative behavior.

这两个研究项目探讨了消费者需求的两个方面，这两个方面对市场效率具有重要影响：异构消费者搜索和社交学习。这两个项目都使用了非常适合要解决的问题的新数据集。 第一个项目研究了消费者在零售市场寻找处方药的性质和强度。即使在同一当地市场，处方药的零售价格在不同药店之间也存在很大差异，之前的研究表明，价格分散的模式与消费者搜索的经济模型一致：例如，购买的药物的价格往往分散程度要小得多与一次性药物相比，反复用药（这对价格购买的激励最为强烈）。该项目将调查两个小城市超过 200,000 份处方药购买的数据。对于每笔交易，数据都会识别实际价格和支付类型（现金、第三方保险或医疗补助）以及处方特征。由于所有竞争药店的价格和数量数据都是可用的，因此有关消费者搜索范围的信息可以通过观察到的市场份额对相对价格差异的敏感性来揭示。该研究将为有关价格分散和消费者搜索的重要问题提供答案：这些市场中的消费者搜索有多强烈（即，有多少消费者选择在购买前进行价格购物？）不同药物的搜索强度变化是否与预测一致消费者搜索的经济理论？估计的搜索强度揭示了搜索成本的基本分布是什么？ 第二个项目涉及社会学习对个人健康保险计划选择的影响。大公司的员工通常会从雇主赞助的一系列健康保险中进行选择；由于健康计划的选择可能是一个复杂的决定，个人可能会尝试通过直接沟通或基于观察到的选择进行推论，从同事那里了解计划的相对质量。这种学习的原因和后果已在理论文献中得到形式化和讨论，但很少有人努力从经验上衡量社会学习的重要性。本研究将使用一所主要大学员工的健康计划选择数据来获得社会学习效果的定量估计。有关员工人口统计数据（尤其是他们工作的部门）的信息将用于确定进行学习的沟通渠道。简而言之，如果部门内个人的决策比部门间的决策更加相似，则可以将其视为学习或“羊群效应”的暗示。这是该项目主要方法的基本思想，即估计健康计划选择的计量经济学模型，其中纳入了邻居决策对个人决策的影响。实证结果将对学习的性质和程度、需求分析和健康计划竞争的影响以及模仿行为造成的潜在福利损失的程度产生重要的见解。