Simultaneous Search and Adverse Selection

We study the effect of diminishing search frictions in markets with adverse selec-tion by presenting a model in which agents with private information can simultaneously contact multiple trading partners. We highlight a new trade-off: facilitating contacts reduces coordination frictions but also the ability to screen agents’ types. We find that, when agents can contact sufficiently many trading partners, fully separating equilib-ria obtain only if adverse selection is sufficiently severe. When this condition fails, equilibria feature partial pooling and multiple equilibria co-exist. In the limit, as the number of contacts becomes large, some of the equilibria converge to the competitive outcomes of Akerlof (1970), including Pareto dominated ones; other pooling equilibria continue to feature frictional trade in the limit, where entry is inefficiently high. Our findings provide a basis to assess the effects of recent technological innovations which have made meetings easier.