these search costs are strongly influenced by the characteristics of energy service markets and by the nature of energy efficiency as a good search costs are determined in part by factors outside a firm s control such as the existence or not of standardized labelling schemes and by internal factors such as company procedures for gathering information and specifying purchasing and procuring the new equipment or process developing country firms may find it more costly to improve energy efficiency because an array of economic and political factors often boost their search costs sorrell mallett and nye low labour costs relative to energy costs unless energy use is heavily subsidized in developing countries might suggest that the energymanagement overhead would be less of a barrier than in developed countries