Two-sided allocation problems, decomposability, and the impossibility of efficient trade

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Delacretaz, David; Loertscher, Simon; Marx, Leslie M.; Wilkening, Tom
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; University of Melbourne; Duke University; University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.11.004
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 416-454
• 关键词: Mechanism design; assignment games; Impossibility theorems; Decomposability; Size-dependent discounts

摘要

Previous literature has shown that private information is a transaction cost that prevents efficient reallocation in two-sided setups with bilateral trade or homogeneous goods. We derive conditions under which the impossibility of efficient trade extends to rich environments in which buyers and sellers have multidimensional private types, accommodating many-to-many trades and heterogeneous objects. If agents can be decomposed into unit constituents, the allocation problem can be represented as an assignment game and impossibility obtains through a generalization of Shapley's (1962) result that buyers and sellers are complements. We introduce a general family of payoff functions that ensures decomposability and thus impossibility. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.