IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tor/tecipa/faig-02-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Theory of Commerce: Competitive Search Under Private Information

Author

Listed:
  • Miquel Faig
  • Belen Jerez

Abstract

We extend the concept of competitive search to an environment where, as is often common, sellers cannot observe the willingness to pay of their clients. This theoretical contribution is applied to model retail trade. We find that in equilibrium the ratio of buyers over sellers exceeds that of the first best allocation. However, a planner who faces the same informational constraints as the market and whose only policy instrument is to regulate market prices cannot improve upon the equilibrium allocation when the production technology is linear. The model we construct is quite tractable, and when inserted in a Neoclassical growth framework it is suciently rich to be taken to the data for estimation. The search parameters can be identified with data on commercial margins and the households' allocation of time.

Suggested Citation

  • Miquel Faig & Belen Jerez, 2003. "A Theory of Commerce: Competitive Search Under Private Information," Working Papers faig-02-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:faig-02-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/UT-ECIPA-FAIG-02-01.pdf
    File Function: MainText
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shouyong Shi, 1997. "A Divisible Search Model of Fiat Money," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(1), pages 75-102, January.
    2. Betancourt, Roger R & Gautschi, David A, 1993. "The Outputs of Retail Activities: Concepts, Measurement and Evidence from U.S. Census Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 294-301, May.
    3. Kenneth Burdett & Shouyong Shi & Randall Wright, 1998. "Pricing with frictions," Working Papers 98-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    5. Miquel Faig, 2001. "A Search Theory of Money and Commerce with Neoclassical Production," Working Papers faig-01-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    6. Peters, Michael, 1991. "Ex Ante Price Offers in Matching Games Non-steady States," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1425-1454, September.
    7. Mortensen, Dale T, 1982. "Property Rights and Efficiency in Mating, Racing, and Related Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(5), pages 968-979, December.
    8. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1989. "On Money as a Medium of Exchange," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 927-954, August.
    9. Moen, Espen R, 1997. "Competitive Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 385-411, April.
    10. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1993. "A Search-Theoretic Approach to Monetary Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 63-77, March.
    11. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    12. Arthur J. Hosios, 1990. "On The Efficiency of Matching and Related Models of Search and Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(2), pages 279-298.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Faig, Miquel & Jerez, Belen, 2005. "A theory of commerce," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 60-99, May.
    2. Guillaume Rocheteau & Pierre‐Olivier Weill, 2011. "Liquidity in Frictional Asset Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(s2), pages 261-282, October.
    3. Aruoba, S. Boragan & Waller, Christopher J. & Wright, Randall, 2011. "Money and capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 98-116, March.
    4. Aleksander Berentsen & Guillaume Rocheteau & Shouyong Shi, 2007. "Friedman Meets Hosios: Efficiency in Search Models of Money," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(516), pages 174-195, January.
    5. Aleksander Berentsen & Guido Menzio & Randall Wright, 2011. "Inflation and Unemployment in the Long Run," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 371-398, February.
    6. Faig Miquel & Jerez Belén, 2006. "Inflation, Prices, and Information in Competitive Search," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-34, September.
    7. Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright, 2005. "Money in Search Equilibrium, in Competitive Equilibrium, and in Competitive Search Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 175-202, January.
    8. Ricardo Lagos & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2005. "Inflation, Output, And Welfare," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(2), pages 495-522, May.
    9. S. Boragan Aruoba & Christopher J. Waller & Randall Wright, 2009. "Money and capital: a quantitative analysis," Working Papers 2009-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    10. Berentsen, Aleksander & Menzio, Guido & Wright, Randall D., 2007. "Inflation and Unemployment: Lagos-Wright meets Mortensen-Pissarides," Kiel Working Papers 1334, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    11. Daron Acemoglu & Robert Shimer, 1999. "Efficient Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 893-928, October.
    12. Han, Han & Julien, Benoît & Petursdottir, Asgerdur & Wang, Liang, 2016. "Equilibrium using credit or money with indivisible goods," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 152-163.
    13. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    14. Shouyong Shi, 2005. "Frictional Assignment, Part II: Infinite Horizon and Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 106-137, January.
    15. Duffie, Darrell & Qiao, Lei & Sun, Yeneng, 2018. "Dynamic directed random matching," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 124-183.
    16. Menzio, Guido & Shi, Shouyong & Sun, Hongfei, 2013. "A monetary theory with non-degenerate distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2266-2312.
    17. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2015. "Meeting technologies and optimal trading mechanisms in competitive search markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-15.
    18. Benoît Julien & John Kennes & Ian King, 2005. "Monetary Exchange with Multilateral Matching," Discussion Papers 05-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics, revised Oct 2005.
    19. Shouyong Shi, 2009. "Directed Search for Equilibrium Wage-Tenure Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 561-584, March.
    20. Ennis, Huberto M., 2008. "Search, money, and inflation under private information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 101-131, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Canadian Macro Study Group

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:faig-02-01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RePEc Maintainer (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.