Optimal pricing, private information and search for an outside offer

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Auster, Sarah; Kos, Nenad; Piccolo, Salvatore
• 署名单位: University of Bonn; Bocconi University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Bocconi University; University of Bergamo
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12390
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 758-777
• 关键词: Adverse selection; Nash equilibrium; solicitation; COMPETITION; EXISTENCE; POWER

摘要

A buyer can either buy a good at a local monopolist or search for it in the market. The more intensely the buyer searches, the more likely he will find the good in the market; if his search fails, he can still buy it from the local monopolist. We show that a buyer with a higher willingness to pay searches (weakly) more intensely. This skews the distribution of types buying at the local monopolist toward lower valuations and exerts pressure on the local monopolist to reduce his price. Despite this effect, offering the monopoly price remains weakly optimal in equilibrium.