PRODUCT DESIGN IN SELECTION MARKETS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Veiga, Andre; Weyl, E. Glen
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; Microsoft; Yale University
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjw007
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1007-1056
• 关键词: insurance markets; asymmetric information; imperfect information; health-insurance; credit markets; monopoly; QUALITY; differentiation; externalities; auctions

摘要

In selection markets, where the cost of serving consumers is heterogeneous and noncontractible, nonprice product features allow a firm to sort profitable from unprofitable consumers. An example of this sorting by quality'' is the use of down payments to dissuade borrowers who are unlikely to repay. We study a model in which consumers have multidimensional types and a firm offers a single product of endogenous quality, as in Spence (1975). These two ingredients generate a novel sorting incentive in a firm's first-order condition for quality, which is a simple ratio. The denominator is marginal consumer surplus, a measure of market power. The numerator is the covariance, among marginal consumers, between marginal willingness to pay for quality and cost to the firm. We provide conditions under which this term is signed and contrast the sorting incentives of a profit-maximizer and a social planner. We then use this characterization to quantify the importance of sorting empirically in subprime auto lending, analytically sign its impact in a model of add-on pricing, and calibrate optimal competition policy in health insurance markets.