Optimal Sales Contracts with Withdrawal Rights

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kraehmer, Daniel; Strausz, Roland
• 署名单位: University of Bonn; Humboldt University of Berlin
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdv003
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 762-790
• 关键词: money-back guarantee; mechanism design; warranties; management; disclosure; principal; QUALITY; signals; price

摘要

We introduce ex post participation constraints in the standard sequential screening model. This captures the presence of consumer withdrawal rights as, for instance, mandated by European Union regulation of distance sales contracts. With such additional constraints, the optimal contract is static and, unlike with only ex ante participation constraints, does not elicit the agent's information sequentially. This holds whenever differences in ex ante and ex post outside options are below a positive upper bound. Welfare effects of mandatory withdrawal rights are ambiguous. Since it is insufficient in our setting to consider only local incentive constraints, we develop a novel technique to identify the relevant global constraints.