  The existing studies on consumer search agree that consumers are worse-off
when they do not observe sellers' production marginal cost than when they do.
In this paper we challenge this conclusion. Employing a canonical model of
simultaneous search, we show that it may be favorable for consumer to not
observe the production marginal cost. The reason is that, in expectation,
consumer search more intensely when they do not know sellers' production
marginal cost than when they know it. More intense search imposes higher
competitive pressure on sellers, which in turn benefits consumers through lower
prices.
