Meetings and Mechanisms

Pieter Gautier, Xiaoming Cai and Ronald Wolthoff

No 12542, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We analyze a market in which sellers compete for heterogeneous buyers by posting mechanisms. A general meeting technology governs how buyers and sellers meet. We introduce a one-to-one transformation of this meeting technology that helps to clarify and extend many of the existing results in the literature, which has focused on two special cases: urn-ball and bilateral meetings. We show that the optimal mechanism for sellers is to post auctions combined with a reserve price equal to their own valuation and an appropriate fee (or subsidy) which is paid by (or to) all buyers meeting the seller. Even when there are externalities in the meeting process, the equilibrium is efficient. Finally, we analyze the sorting patterns between heterogeneous buyers and sellers and show under which conditions high-value sellers attract more high-value buyers in expectation.

Keywords: Search frictions; Matching function; Competing mechanisms; Meeting technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D44 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des and nep-mic
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: MEETINGS AND MECHANISMS (2023)
Working Paper: Meetings and Mechanisms (2022)
Working Paper: Meetings and Mechanisms (2017)
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