Experimental Evidence on the Behavioral (In)Efficiency of Search-and-Matching Market Institutions

Kenneth Chan and Samuel Fahim

No 105, Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers from Berlin School of Economics

Abstract: We design a lab experiment to study three different search-and-matching market institutions: (1) price posting with directed search, (2) bargaining with directed search, and (3) bargaining with a guaranteed match. We compare their performance in terms of market efficiency, prices of goods, and subjects’ preferences across different market institutions. We find that the price-posting market with directed search is the most efficient, has the lowest prices (a more equitable split of surpluses), and is the most preferred market institution among our experimental subjects.

Keywords: Directed search; Price Posting; Bargaining; Matching Frictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C92 D02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65 pages
Date: 2026-07-20
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/files/6304/BSoE_DP_0105.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0105

DOI: 10.48462/opus4-6304

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers from Berlin School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Reiter ().