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Industry Expertise (3)
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Areas of Expertise (3)
Industrial Organization
Applied Microeconomics
Applied Econometrics
Education (3)
Erasmus University, Rotterdam: Ph.D., Economics 2007
Tinbergen Institute: M.Phil., Economics 2003
Erasmus University, Rotterdam: M.Sc. (Cum Laude), Economics 2003
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Media Appearances (2)
Nieuwsoverzicht: Connie Breukhoven heeft weer eens ruzie en ABN naar de beurs
Quote online
2015-05-22
"Autokopers die naar een dealer gaan, kunnen beter geen kinderen meenemen. Ze moeten zich wat sjofel kleden en verbloemen dat ze van ver zijn gekomen. Autodealers weten dat jengelend kroost, een hoger inkomen en een grotere reisafstand hen in de kaart spelen, blijkt uit onderzoek van onderzoeker Matthijs Wildenbeest (Universiteit van Indiana, VS) dat in economenblad ESB verschijnt..."
Quality Branding Helps Drive Organic Web Traffic through Search
Skyword online
2014-08-25
"'Our analysis indicates not only that investments in brand equity lead to significantly more organic clicks, but also that these investments are more likely to be sustainable than SEO efforts focused entirely on rank,' concluded researchers Michael R. Baye, Babur De los Santos, and Matthijs R. Wildenbeest..."
Articles (5)
Nonsequential Search Equilibrium with Search Cost Heterogeneity
International Journal of Industrial Organization
2017 We generalize the model of Burdett and Judd (1983) to the case where an arbitrary finite number of firms sells a homogeneous good to buyers who have heterogeneous search costs. We show that a price dispersed symmetric Nash equilibrium always exists. Numerical results show that the behavior of prices and consumer surplus with respect to the number of firms hinges upon the nature of search cost dispersion: when search costs are relatively concentrated, entry of firms leads to lower average prices and greater consumer surplus; however, for relatively dispersed search costs, the mean price goes up and consumer surplus may decrease with the number of firms.
What’s in a Name? Measuring Prominence and its Impact on Organic Fraffic from Search Engines
Information Economics and Policy
2016 Organic product search results on Google and Bing do not systematically include information about seller characteristics (e.g., feedback ratings and prices). Consequently, it is often assumed that a retailer’s organic traffic is driven by the prominence of its position in the list of search results. We propose a novel measure of the prominence of a retailer’s name, and show that it is also an important predictor of the organic traffic retailers enjoy from product searches through Google and Bing. We also show that failure to account for the prominence of retailers’ names—as ...
Prices and Heterogeneous Search Costs
RAND Journal of Economics
2015 We study price formation in a model of consumer search for differentiated products when consumers have heterogeneous marginal search costs. We provide conditions under which a symmetric Nash equilibrium exists and is unique. Search costs affect two margins - the intensive search margin (or search intensity) and the extensive search margin (or the decision to search rather than to not search at all). These two margins affect the elasticity of demand in opposite directions and whether lower search costs result in higher or lower prices depends on the properties of ...
Searching for Physical and Digital Media: The Evolution of Platforms for Finding Books
Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy
2015 This paper provides a data-driven overview of the different online platforms that consumers use to search for books and booksellers, and documents how the use of these platforms is shifting over time. Our data suggest that, as a result of digitization, consumers are increasingly conducting searches for books at retailer sites and closed systems (e.g., the Kindle and Nook) rather than at general search engines (e.g., Google or Bing). We also highlight a number of challenges that will make it difficult for researchers to accurately measure internet-based search behavior in the ...
Search with Learning for Differentiated Products: Evidence from E-Commerce
Journal of Business & Economic Statistics
2015 This paper provides a method to estimate search costs in a differentiated product environment in which consumers are uncertain about the utility distribution. Consumers learn about the utility distribution by Bayesian updating their Dirichlet process prior beliefs. The model provides expressions for bounds on the search costs that can rationalize observed search and purchasing behavior. Using individual-specific data on web browsing and purchasing behavior for MP3 players sold online we show how to use these bounds to estimate search costs as well as the parameters of ...
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