Sorting versus screening: Search frictions and competing mechanisms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Eeckhout, Jan; Kircher, Philipp
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; ICREA; Pompeu Fabra University; University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2010.01.005
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 1354-1385
• 关键词: Competing mechanism design; Matching function; Meeting function; sorting; screening; price posting; auctions

摘要

In a market where sellers compete by posting trading mechanisms, we allow for a general search technology and show that its features crucially affect the equilibrium mechanism. Price posting prevails when meetings are rival, i.e., when a meeting by one buyer reduces another buyer's meeting probability. Under price posting buyers reveal their type by sorting ex-ante. Only if the meeting technology is sufficiently non-rival, price posting is not an equilibrium. Multiple buyer types then visit the same sellers who screen ex-post through auctions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.