The Social Costs of Side Trading

Andrea Attar, Thomas Mariotti and François Salanié

The Economic Journal, 2020, vol. 130, issue 630, 1608-1622

Abstract: We study resource allocation under private information when the planner cannot prevent bilateral side trading between consumers and firms. Adverse selection and side trading severely restrict feasible trades: each marginal quantity must be fairly priced given the consumer types who purchase it. The resulting social costs are twofold. First, second-best efficiency and robustness to side trading are in general irreconcilable requirements. Second, there actually exists only one budget-feasible allocation robust to side trading, which deprives the planner from any capacity to redistribute resources between different types of consumers. We discuss the relevance of our results for insurance and financial markets.

Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The social costs of side trading (2020)
Working Paper: The Social Costs of Side Trading (2020)
Working Paper: The Social Costs of Side Trading (2019)
Working Paper: The Social Costs of Side Trading (2019)
Working Paper: The Social Costs of Side Trading (2019)
Working Paper: The Social Costs of Side Trading (2019)
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