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The Social Costs of Side Trading

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  • Andrea Attar
  • Thomas Mariotti
  • François Salanié

Abstract

We study resource allocation under private information when the planner cannot prevent bilateral side trading between consumers and firms. Adverse selection and side trading severely restrict feasible trades: each marginal quantity must be fairly priced given the consumer types who purchase it. The resulting social costs are twofold. First, second-best effciency and robustness to side trading are in general irreconcilable requirements. Second, there actually exists only one budget-feasible allocation robust to side trading, which deprives the planner from any capacity to redistribute resources between different types of consumers. We discuss the relevance of our results for insurance and financial markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2019. "The Social Costs of Side Trading," EconPol Working Paper 34, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:econwp:_34
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. David Rowell & Peter Zweifel, 2024. "Separating Equilibria with Search and Selection Effort: Evidence from the Auto Insurance Market," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-25, April.
    3. Kosenko, Andrew & Stiglitz, Joseph & Yun, Jungyoll, 2023. "Bilateral information disclosure in adverse selection markets with nonexclusive competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 144-168.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

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