Consumer Search and Quality

This dissertation contains three essays in consumer search. The first essay provides a framework for studying quality provision in a search market. It characterises the existence and uniqueness of a symmetric equilibrium in pure strategies. The second essay studies the provision of quality and welfare in a competitive search market for services. The third essay investigates a search market in which the quality of the product is improved over time. It is motivated by the fact that the expectation of future quality improvements may have an impact on consumers’ current purchase choices.

Yajie

Sun (1990) obtained a Bachelor in Economics from Shanghai university of Finance

and Economics in 2012. She completed her MPhil study at Tinbergen Institute in

2014. Afterwards, she joined the department of Economics at Vrije Universiteit

Amsterdam as a PhD student. She has worked as a quantitative analyst at ING

bank from 2017.