Sorting Effects in Competitive Search Markets

竞争性搜索市场中的排序效应

• 批准号: 0752076
• 负责人: Philipp Kircher
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-03-15 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0752076&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sorting; Effects; Competitive; Search; Markets

This research project analyzes markets in which participants compete for trading partners, but instantaneous trade is not ensured. In these markets sellers are not only concerned about the price they can achieve, but also about the speed at which they can trade. Such a concern is absent in classical economics models where trade is immediate when the price is right. An example of an imperfect market is the housing market, where sellers want to sell at a high price but are concerned that the process of finding a buyer might take half a year and longer. Such concerns for price and speed of trade are pervasive in other markets as well. Stores are concerned about their sales price and about their inventories' turn-around time, and employers want to hire workers at low wages but are concerned if they cannot quickly find someone to do the job. Trading imperfections have traditionally been modeled as random search, i.e. traders meet randomly and even a desperate seller has few possibilities to speed up the trading process. Yet in many markets the traders have a competitive element that allows them to attract trading partners: The seller of a house can lower his asking price in order to induce more buyers to come and take a look at the house, stores advertise reduced prices for their products to attract customers, and firms compete in terms of employee satisfaction rankings and amenities as well as wages to attract applications by qualified workers. Therefore, this project combines classical elements of competition with the idea that people have to "search" for the right trading partner. The analysis advances the theory of competitive search in order to address the following questions: 1. Who trades with whom in such markets? 2. Through which trading protocols do sellers compete when faced with trade frictions? 3. How do buyers react to the frictions if they can shop around at various sellers?The first question concerns the trading patterns that we expect for these markets. It subsumes questions such as: Will high skilled workers work at machines of high quality? Are the best houses bought by the most desperate buyers? Under which conditions is the answer to these questions "Yes"? The project provides such conditions in a tight mathematical form that is helpful for our understanding of the interactions in these markets. These conditions also allow us to address secondary issues concerning e.g. the income spread of workers at different machines (occupations) and workers incentives to invest in skills. The second question broadens the way in which sellers (employers) can compete for buyers (workers), and their consequences for the trading outcomes. In particular the efficiency of the market interaction is of interest, i.e. which conditions render simple pricing mechanisms optimal within the larger framework of competing mechanisms.The third question broadens the analysis to allow buyers to shop around at several sellers or unemployed workers to apply to several employers. The focus is on the robustness of earlier finding as well as additional questions such as: Do workers apply enough? Do they apply to the right set of firms? Our framework allows us to investigate concerns that cannot be answered in standard models where workers only apply to at most one job.

该研究项目分析了参与者争夺贸易伙伴的市场，但不能确保瞬时贸易。在这些市场中，卖方不仅关心他们可以达到的价格，而且还关注他们可以交易的速度。在价格合适时贸易即时的古典经济学模型中，这种关注不存在。不完善市场的一个例子是房地产市场，卖家想以高价出售，但担心寻找买方的过程可能需要半年且更长的时间。这种对价格和贸易速度的担忧在其他市场也普遍存在。 商店担心他们的销售价格和库存的周转时间，雇主想以低工资雇用工人，但担心他们是否无法快速找到某人来完成这项工作。传统上，交易瑕疵是作为随机搜索建模的，即交易者随机相遇，甚至绝望的卖家几乎没有可能加快交易过程的可能性。然而，在许多市场中，贸易商都有一个竞争因素，使他们能够吸引交易伙伴：房屋的卖家可以降低他的要价，以诱使更多的买家来看看房屋，商店宣传降低的产品价格以吸引客户，并在员工满意度排名和工资中吸引竞争者，以吸引适用于合格的员工，以通过合格的工作来吸引。因此，该项目将竞争的经典要素与人们必须“搜索”合适的交易伙伴的想法结合在一起。分析提出了竞争性搜索理论，以解决以下问题：1。谁在这样的市场中与谁进行交易？ 2。卖方面对贸易摩擦时会通过哪些交易方案进行竞争？ 3。如果买家可以在各种卖家中购物，他们对摩擦有何反应？第一个问题涉及我们对这些市场期望的交易方式。它包含以下问题：高技能工人会在高质量的机器上工作吗？是最绝望的买家买的最好的房屋吗？在哪些条件下，这些问题的答案是“是”？该项目以紧密的数学形式提供此类条件，这有助于我们理解这些市场的相互作用。这些条件还使我们能够解决有关例如工人在不同机器（职业）的收入分布以及工人激励投资技能。第二个问题扩大了卖方（雇主）可以为买家（工人）竞争的方式及其对交易成果的后果。特别是，市场互动的效率令人感兴趣，即哪种条件在更大的竞争机制的较大框架内提供了最佳的简单定价机制。第三个问题扩大了分析，以允许买家在几个卖方或失业者中逛逛，以申请几个雇主。重点是早期发现的鲁棒性以及其他问题，例如：工人是否足够应用？它们适用于合适的公司吗？我们的框架使我们能够调查在最多只适用于一项工作的标准模型中无法回答的问题。