Market-Minded Informational Intermediary and Unintended Welfare Loss

Research output: Working PapersDiscussion paper

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Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages47
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2022

Publication series

NameCowles Foundation Discussion Paper
PublisherCowles Foundation for Research in Economics
No.2321

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

Citation Format(s)

Market-Minded Informational Intermediary and Unintended Welfare Loss. / Xu, Wenji; Yang, Kai Hao.

2022. (Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper; No. 2321).

Research output: Working PapersDiscussion paper