General Competing Mechanisms with Frictions

Seungjin Han

Department of Economics Working Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: This paper studies the class of robust equilibria in a general competing mechanism game for decentralized markets with frictions in which non-deviating sellers punish a deviator with dominant strategy incentive compatible (DIC) direct mechanisms. Given one-dimensional, independent, and private types, the lower bound of a seller's payoff in such equilibria is his minmax value over all DIC direct mechanisms if a seller can deviate to a contract that determines a menu of any complex mechanisms conditional on buyers' messages and he chooses a mechanism he wants from it. In applications, the number of sellers is endogenized given a number of buyers and fixed entry costs. As the number of buyer increases, a unique equilibrium emerges and the equilibrium ratio of buyers to sellers converges to the point where a seller's net profit is zero with the monopoly terms of trade.

Keywords: competing mechanisms; dominant strategy incentive compatibility; frictions; implicit collusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D47 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cta, nep-gth and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2019-09

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