              MARTINA HEDVIČÁKOVÁ 1 , IVAN SOUKAL 1 , JAN DRAESSLER 2 1 Department of Economics, 2 Department of Informatics and Quantitative methods University of Hradec Králové Rokitanského 62, Hradec Králové 500 03, CZECH REPUBLIC martina.hedvicakova@uhk.cz, ivan.soukal@uhk.cz, jan.draessler@uhk.cz   The paper is focused on information asymmetry on the retail core banking services products for physical entities in the Czech Republic. The consumer does not have an overview considering all of the offered prices. The paper presents a small market model based on the idea of the costs of the information and probability of savings from better price finding – performs a case study of rational behavior under the conditions of information asymmetry, because the final price of the product consists of the tariff and costs on search for the product too.   information asymmetry, retail core banking services, Stigler’s model, small market problem, mainstream client, expected price, search costs, Czech republic.   Information asymmetry is a situation where one side of the market benefits from the information advantage at the expense of the second one. This results in the market non?equilibriality. Since the first ground?breaking (or there can be said “neoclassical paradigm?breaking”) thoughts of I. Fisher, R. Knight and F. A. Hayek we can’t study the market any more without information assessment – the market of retail core banking services, mostly known as current accounts, (thereinafter only as RCBS) is not an exception. Information asymmetry in financial sector was and it is studied closely. Still the main fields of study were the loan, insurance and investment markets, but not the RCBS one. European Union (thereinafter only as EU) authorities, such as the Directorate?General for Health and Consumers Protection, have focused on this issue for the first time 6 years ago in [1]. There the sub goal of removing the undue barriers associated with all types of bank accounts and to improve the competition between service providers was declared. In the following years there were repeatedly (e.g. in studies [2], [3]) named and proved two real RCBS market problems – tariffs’ opacity and hard product comparison. Both are typical empirical examples of information asymmetry. Both can be answered by the market and also by the authorities (e.g. education of the clients, basic financial literacy as points out [4]). The question is: how to make rational consumer decision under those conditions? And what are the conditions on the targeted RCBS market?          The question of consumer decision under the information asymmetry (represented by uncertainty) gained new meaning in the breakthrough paper [5]. What Stigler claimed about his products can be applied on banking products too, to be more specific current account on RCBS market. Stigler is solving the situation when the consumer tries to find the best price by doing the search – or better the searches. Search will be meant the process of canvassing of one supplier. Applying his idea – Stigler’s approach shifts the consumer’s optimum (consumer’s surplus maximization) along the marginal utility curve by adding a new product price component (within the frame of the cardinalistic theory). There was introduced a new way of rational consumer behavior by the balance of marginal costs and marginal returns on information. Marginal returns are achieved through known price(s) and the best found price. We decided to use the basic idea and to rework the original model for specific Czech Republic RCBS market needs. The problem is what are the costs of the search on RCBS market? They definitely exist and EU research indicates that those costs might be very high because of information asymmetry. It is difficult for client to compare and Recent Researches in Economics ISBN: 978-1-61804-061-9 23