Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
买家最优的平台设计
Buyer‐Optimal Platform Design
摘要
A platform matches a unit mass of sellers, each owning a single product of heterogeneous quality, to a unit mass of buyers with differing valuations for unit-quality. After matching, sellers make take-it-or-leave-it price-offers to buyers. Initially, valuations of buyers are only known to them and the platform, but sellers make inferences from the matching algorithm. The efficient matching is positive assortative, but buyer-optimal matchings are stochastically negative assortative when there are few low-value buyers (i.e., compared to lower-quality sellers, high-quality ones are matched to buyers with lower expected valuation). Although everyone trades, generating rents for the side lacking bargaining power results in inefficient matching.
中文摘要
平台将单位质量的卖方（每位卖方拥有一件质量异质的产品）与单位质量的买方（对单位质量具有不同估值）进行匹配。匹配完成后，卖方对买方提出“要么接受，要么放弃”的价格报价。初始时，买方的估值仅为其自身和平台所知，但卖方会从匹配算法中进行推断。有效匹配是正选择性的，但当低价值买方数量较少时（即与低质量卖方相比，高质量卖方匹配到的买方预期估值更低），买方最优匹配在随机意义上是负选择性的。尽管所有交易均能达成，但为缺乏议价能力的一方创造租金会导致匹配效率低下。