[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/3905.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Quality Selection in Two-Sided Markets: A Constrained Price Discrimination Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Johari, Ramesh

    (Stanford U)

  • Light, Bar

    (Stanford U)

  • Weintraub, Gabriel Y.

    (Stanford U)

Abstract
Online platforms collect rich information about participants and then share some of this information back with them to improve market outcomes. In this paper we study the following information disclosure problem in two-sided markets: If a platform wants to maximize revenue, which sellers should the platform allow to participate, and how much of its available information about participating sellers' quality should the platform share with buyers? We study this information disclosure problem in the context of two distinct two-sided market models: one in which the platform chooses prices and the sellers choose quantities (similar to ride-sharing), and one in which the sellers choose prices (similar to e-commerce). Our main results provide conditions under which simple information structures commonly observed in practice, such as banning certain sellers from the platform while not distinguishing between participating sellers, maximize the platform's revenue. An important innovation in our analysis is to transform the platform's information disclosure problem into a constrained price discrimination problem. We leverage this transformation to obtain our structural results.

Suggested Citation

  • Johari, Ramesh & Light, Bar & Weintraub, Gabriel Y., 2021. "Quality Selection in Two-Sided Markets: A Constrained Price Discrimination Approach," Research Papers 3905, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:3905
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/quality-selection-two-sided-markets-constrained-price
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    2. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    3. Nikhil Vellodi, 2018. "Ratings Design and Barriers to Entry," Working Papers 18-13, NET Institute.
    4. Lehrer, Ehud & Rosenberg, Dinah & Shmaya, Eran, 2010. "Signaling and mediation in games with common interests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 670-682, March.
    5. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    6. Gleb Romanyuk & Alex Smolin, 2019. "Cream Skimming and Information Design in Matching Markets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 250-276, May.
    7. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    8. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    9. Michael Ostrovsky & Michael Schwarz, 2010. "Information Disclosure and Unraveling in Matching Markets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 34-63, May.
    10. Nikhil Vellodi, 2018. "Ratings Design and Barriers to Entry," Working Papers 18-13, NET Institute.
    11. Xiang Hui & Maryam Saeedi & Giancarlo Spagnolo & Steven Tadelis, 2018. "Certification, Reputation and Entry: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Working Papers 24916, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Steven Tadelis, 2016. "Reputation and Feedback Systems in Online Platform Markets," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 321-340, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Ottaviani & Andrea Prat, 2001. "The Value of Public Information in Monopoly," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1673-1683, November.
    2. Xavier d'Haultfoeuille & Philippe Février, 2007. "Identification and Estimation of Incentive Problems : Adverse Selection," Working Papers 2007-21, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    3. Alexander, Corinne & Ivanic, Rasto & Rosch, Stephanie & Tyner, Wallace & Wu, Steven Y. & Yoder, Joshua R., 2012. "Contract theory and implications for perennial energy crop contracting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 970-979.
    4. Maryam Saeedi & Ali Shourideh, 2020. "Optimal Rating Design under Moral Hazard," Papers 2008.09529, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    5. Bergemann, Dirk & Pavan, Alessandro, 2015. "Introduction to Symposium on Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 679-701.
    6. Carlos Segura-Rodriguez, 2019. "Selling Data," PIER Working Paper Archive 19-006, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    7. Jean‐Jacques Laffont, 1989. "A Brief Overview of the Economics of Incomplete Markets," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 65(1), pages 54-65, March.
    8. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2019. "Information Design: A Unified Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 44-95, March.
    9. Renato Gomes & Alessandro Pavan, 2013. "Cross-Subsidization and Matching Design," Discussion Papers 1559, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    10. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2015. "The Limits of Price Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 921-957, March.
    11. William Fuchs & Luis Garicano & Luis Rayo, 2015. "Optimal Contracting and the Organization of Knowledge," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 632-658.
    12. Wong, Adam Chi Leung, 2014. "The choice of the number of varieties: Justifying simple mechanisms," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 7-21.
    13. Goldstein, Itay & Leitner, Yaron, 2018. "Stress tests and information disclosure," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 34-69.
    14. Gérard Mondello, 2012. "Strict Liability, Capped Strict Liability, and Care Effort under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 168(2), pages 232-251, June.
    15. Dirk Bergemann & Karl Schlag, 2012. "Robust Monopoly Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 13, pages 417-441, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. Dirk Bergemann & Tibor Heumann & Stephen Morris, 2022. "Screening with Persuasion," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2338, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Pavan, 2015. "Introduction to JET Symposium Issue on "Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2016, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    18. X. Ruiz del Portal, 2012. "Conditions for incentive compatibility in models with multidimensional allocation functions and one-dimensional types," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(4), pages 311-321, December.
    19. Mark Armstrong, 2016. "Nonlinear Pricing," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 583-614, October.
    20. Yamashita, Takuro, 2018. "Optimal Public Information Disclosure by Mechanism Designer," TSE Working Papers 18-936, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:3905. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.