Bilateral trade with a benevolent intermediary

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Eilat, Ran; Pauzner, Ady
• 署名单位: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Tel Aviv University
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1933-6837
• DOI: 10.3982/TE3703
• 发表日期: 2021-11-01
• 页码: 1655-1714
• 关键词: Intermediation; mechanism design; imperfect commitment; asymmetric information; bilateral trade; C72; D82; D83

摘要

We study intermediaries who seek to maximize gains from trade in bilateral negotiations. Intermediaries are players: they cannot commit to act against their objective function and deny, in some cases, trade they believe to be beneficial. This impairs their ability to assist the parties relative to conventional mechanisms. We analyze this limited commitment environment as a standard mechanism design problem with an additional credibility constraint, requiring that every outcome be interim-optimal conditional on available information. We investigate how such intermediaries communicate with the parties, analyze the tradeoffs they face, and study the bounds on what they can achieve.