Search Intensity in Experiments

The theoretical literature on the search behavior of workers and consumers typically considers three search strategies. These strategies are characterized by alternative assumptions about the temporal and atemporal intensity of search. The first strategy is an atemporally intensive fixed-sample-size strategy which restricts the agent to collecting exactly one sample of contemporaneous offers but allows him to choose the sample size. The second strategy is a temporally intensive pure-sequential strategy which allows the agent to collect as many samples as he chooses but restricts the size of each to unity. The third strategy is a variable-sample-size strategy, a generalization of the first two which allows the agent to sequentially choose both how many samples to take and the size of each sample. We report an experimental comparison and evaluation of these three search strategies. Copyright 1990 by Royal Economic Society.