Efficient investment, search, and sorting in matching markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Atakan, Alp; Richter, Michael; Tsur, Matan
• 署名单位: University of London; Queen Mary University London; City University of New York (CUNY) System; Baruch College (CUNY); University of London; Royal Holloway University London; University of Bristol
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1933-6837
• DOI: 10.3982/TE6786
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: equilibrium; assignment

摘要

We study markets where heterogeneous agents first make investment decisions and then engage in a costly search to form productive matches. The trading process is a random search and bargaining with explicit search costs. Despite potential hold-up and matching problems, we prove that the constrained efficient allocation is an equilibrium: the agents' private incentives to invest and to accept/reject potential partners as they search are perfectly aligned with the social benefit. Furthermore, we establish a new sorting result for two-sided markets, equilibrium existence, and conditions for uniqueness.