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How to Sell Hard Information

Author

Listed:
  • S Nageeb Ali
  • Nima Haghpanah
  • Xiao Lin
  • Ron Siegel

Abstract

The seller of an asset has the option to buy hard information about the value of the asset from an intermediary. The seller can then disclose this information before selling the asset in a competitive market. We study how the intermediary designs and sells hard information to robustly maximize the intermediary's revenue across all equilibria. Even though the intermediary could use an accurate test that reveals the asset’s value, we show that robust revenue maximization leads to a noisy test with a continuum of possible scores. In addition, the intermediary always charges the seller for disclosing the test score to the market, but not necessarily for running the test. This enables the intermediary to robustly appropriate a significant share of the surplus resulting from the asset sale.

Suggested Citation

  • S Nageeb Ali & Nima Haghpanah & Xiao Lin & Ron Siegel, 2022. "How to Sell Hard Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 619-678.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:137:y:2022:i:1:p:619-678.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjab024
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Peiran Xiao, 2024. "Incentivizing Agents through Ratings," Papers 2407.10525, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2025.
    2. Shipra Agrawal & Yiding Feng & Wei Tang, 2026. "Simple and Robust Quality Disclosure: The Power of Quantile Partition," Papers 2602.01066, arXiv.org.
    3. Christopher Stapenhurst & Andrew Clausen, 2026. "Turning Bribes into Lemons: an optimal mechanism," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 326, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    4. S. Nageeb Ali & Andreas Kleiner & Kun Zhang, 2024. "From Design to Disclosure," Papers 2411.03608, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    5. Kfir Eliaz & Ran Spiegler, 2025. "Monopolistic Data Dumping," Papers 2512.00897, arXiv.org.
    6. Bounie, David & Dubus, Antoine & Waelbroeck, Patrick, 2025. "Collecting and selling consumer information: Selling mechanisms matter," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 103(PB).
    7. Andreas A. Haupt & Nicole Immorlica & Brendan Lucier, 2023. "Certification Design for a Competitive Market," Papers 2301.13449, arXiv.org.
    8. Biswas, Sonny, 2023. "Collateral and bank screening as complements: A spillover effect," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    9. Philipp Strack & Kai Hao Yang, 2024. "Privacy‐Preserving Signals," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(6), pages 1907-1938, November.
    10. Teddy Mekonnen & Zeky Murra-Anton & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, 2025. "Persuaded Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 133(10), pages 3167-3207.
      • Teddy Mekonnen & Zeky Murra-Anton & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, 2023. "Persuaded Search," Papers 2303.13409, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    11. Itay P. Fainmesser & Andrea Galeotti & Ruslan Momot, 2023. "Digital Privacy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3157-3173, June.
    12. Teddy Mekonnen & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, 2024. "Competition, Persuasion, and Search," Papers 2411.11183, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2026.
    13. Peter Achim & Roland Strausz, 2025. "Oligopolistic Information Markets," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 554, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    14. Biswas, Sonny & Koufopoulos, Kostas & Thakor, Anjan V., 2024. "Can information imprecision be valuable? The case of credit ratings," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

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