A micro foundation of obfuscation: time cost, strategic complexity and consumer deadlines

Abstract

We consider a price search model with gradual information arrival and deadlines to study how consumers search within and across stores during a single search spell. This renders the effects of search costs smooth and allows us to endogenize the intensity of competition in a new way that avoids both Diamond and Bertrand paradoxes. Firms can commit to any choice complexity levels. They determine the relative numbers of informed and uninformed consumers, which equal in equilibrium. The outcome is thus halfway from Diamond and Bertrand equilibria. Wider price awareness and advertizing improves welfare by discouraging the prominent firm's obfuscation.