Market-Minded Informational Intermediary and Unintended Welfare Loss
Research output: Working Papers › Discussion paper
Author(s)
Related Research Unit(s)
Detail(s)
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 47 |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2022 |
Publication series
Name | Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper |
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Publisher | Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics |
No. | 2321 |
Link(s)
Document Link | Links
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Permanent Link | https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/publications/publication(1d1fcfcb-692d-4c1c-a823-38cb711ce320).html |
Abstract
This paper examines the welfare effects of informational intermediation. A (short-lived) seller sets the price of a product that is sold through a (long-lived) informational intermediary. The intermediary can disclose information about the product to consumers, earns a fixed percentage of the sales revenue in each period, and has concerns about its prominence---the market size it faces in the future, which in turn is increasing in past consumer surplus. We characterize the Markov perfect equilibria and the set of subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs of this game and show that when the market feedback (i.e., how much past consumer surplus affects future market sizes) increases, welfare may decrease in the Pareto sense.
Research Area(s)
- Informational intermediary, market size, market feedback, consumer surplus, Pareto-inferior outcomes, Markov perfect equilibrium, subgame perfect equilibrium