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Asymmetric Information and Delegated Selling

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  • Janssen, Maarten
  • Roy, Santanu

Abstract

Asymmetric information about product quality can create incentives for a privately informed manufacturer to sell to uninformed consumers through a retailer and to maintain secrecy of upstream pricing. Delegating retail price setting to an intermediary generates pooling equilibria that avoid signaling distortions associated with direct selling even under reasonable restrictions on beliefs; these beliefs can also prevent double marginalization by the retailer. Expected profit, consumer surplus and social welfare can all be higher with intermediated selling. However, if secrecy of upstream pricing cannot be maintained, selling through a retailer can only lower the expected profit of the manufacturer.

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  • Janssen, Maarten & Roy, Santanu, 2020. "Asymmetric Information and Delegated Selling," CEPR Discussion Papers 15537, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15537
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asymmetric information; Product quality; Delegation; Intermediary; Signaling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

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