The "coy seller" problem: A market design to reveal willingness to trade

Apostolos Filippas (), John Horton (), Sehar Noor () and Dmitry Sorokin ()
Additional contact information
Apostolos Filippas: Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University, New York, New York, United States 10023
John Horton: Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States 02142
Sehar Noor: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States 02138
Dmitry Sorokin: Unafilliated

No 22-03, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: Buyers pursuing de facto unavailable sellers is a common source of inefficiency in matching markets. We describe an experimental intervention in an online labor market where workers could rent the right to signal higher capacity via a badge that simply said “Available Now.” This badge was visible to treated employers looking to hire, but not to control employers. We find strong evidence of positive worker selection into badge-renting, and that employers viewed that badge as informative and sought-out workers who rented the badge. We also consider the problem of pricing such a signal in equilibrium, and present evidence from a series of quasi-experiments.

Keywords: Market design; online marketplaces; online experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D47 J32 J40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lma
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