Competition and Dynamic Pricing in Markets with Consumer Switching Costs

In markets with switching costs, firms increase their price as their market share grows. I study the effect of entry on these price dynamics in the Dutch mortgage market. Since en- try occurred in a subset of markets, I control for market-level shocks with a differences-in- differences strategy. Moreover, I exploit the multi-product nature of incumbents to control for unobserved firm-level differences. Consistent with a simple theoretical framework, banks with more locked-in customers decrease their interest rates less after entry. This can explain why policies that encourage competition often disappoint in markets with switching costs. I also discuss implications for competition policy.