We show that small switching costs can have surprisingly dramatic effects in infinitely repeated games if these costs are large relative to payoffs in a single period. This shows that the results in Lipman and Wang [2000] do have analogs in the case of infinitely repeated games.

The convenience of banking via the Internet is allowing the growth of multiple banking relationships while maintaining an everyday account with another bank. Denton and Chan (1991) defined this kind of multiple banking as being conducted where people employ two or more bankers to handle their personal financial affairs. Gerrard and Cunningham (1999) indicated that socio-economic characteristics...

Increasing numbers of countries require mobile telephone networks to offer mobile number portability (MNP). MNP allows customers who wish to switch mobile operator to keep their mobile numbers, avoiding the costs of switching to new numbers. Ex ante assessments suggest that MNP should reduce switching costs and strengthen competition. In this paper, we test MNP’s impact on market outcomes using...

Although many accounts of task switching emphasize the importance of working memory as a substantial source of the switch cost, there is a lack of evidence demonstrating that task switching actually places additional demands on working memory. The present study addressed this issue by implementing task switching in continuous complex span tasks with strictly controlled time parameters. A series...

In this paper we consider the stochastic multi-armed bandit with metric switching costs. Given a set of locations (arms) in a metric space and prior information about the reward available at these locations, cost of getting a sample/play at every location and rules to update the prior based on samples/plays, the task is to maximize a certain objective function constrained to a distance cost of ...

OBJECTIVE To test in a laboratory setting the hypothesis that the most problematic daily outcomes should be particular to individuals displaying higher cortisol reactivity and deficits in executive functioning as assessed in a task-switching paradigm. METHODS Thirty-eight volunteers completed a comprehensive assessment protocol. Individual differences in cortisol reactivity were quantified in...

Despite the existence of two vast literatures, very little is known about the potential di¤erences or interactions between search and switching costs. This paper demonstrates the bene…ts of examining the two frictions in unison. First, the paper shows how subtle distinctions between the two costs can provide important di¤erences in their e¤ects upon consumer behaviour and market prices. In many...

Despite the existence of two vast literatures, very little is known about the potential di¤erences or interactions between search and switching costs. This paper demonstrates the bene…ts of examining the two frictions in unison. First, the paper shows how subtle distinctions between the two costs can provide important di¤erences in their e¤ects upon consumer behaviour and market prices. In many...

In this paper we investigate the possible presence of switching costs when consumers are offered the opportunity to change their basic health insurance provider. We focus on the specific case of Switzerland which implemented a pure form of competition in basic health insurance markets. We identify several barriers to switching, namely choice overload, status quo bias, the possession of suppleme...

People prioritize those aspects of the visual environment that match their attentional set. In the present study, we investigated whether switching from one attentional set to another is associated with a cost. We asked observers to sequentially saccade toward two color-defined targets, one on the left side of the display, the other on the right, each among a set of heterogeneously colored dist...