Waiting for Trade in Markets with Aggregate Uncertainty

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Preusser, Justus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Preusser, Justus
author_facet Preusser, Justus
contents This paper studies learning in markets with aggregate uncertainty about whether trade is efficient. A long-lived seller offers prices to buyers, who are short-lived and arrive according to a Poisson process. A hidden state determines whether the buyers' common value exceeds the seller's reservation value. All parties observe noisy, private signals about the state. With small intertemporal frictions and when the seller has commitment power, the seller waits for a buyer with the most favorable signal to arrive up to an exit time that depends on the seller's private information. This strategy profile maximizes both the seller's profit and the expected surplus. Without commitment, the commitment profit is unattainable. Instead, there is an equilibrium in which the seller also waits for a buyer with the most favorable signal, but, relative to the commitment case, the seller exits inefficiently late, and the trade probability is inefficiently high.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_06132
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Waiting for Trade in Markets with Aggregate Uncertainty
Preusser, Justus
Theoretical Economics
This paper studies learning in markets with aggregate uncertainty about whether trade is efficient. A long-lived seller offers prices to buyers, who are short-lived and arrive according to a Poisson process. A hidden state determines whether the buyers' common value exceeds the seller's reservation value. All parties observe noisy, private signals about the state. With small intertemporal frictions and when the seller has commitment power, the seller waits for a buyer with the most favorable signal to arrive up to an exit time that depends on the seller's private information. This strategy profile maximizes both the seller's profit and the expected surplus. Without commitment, the commitment profit is unattainable. Instead, there is an equilibrium in which the seller also waits for a buyer with the most favorable signal, but, relative to the commitment case, the seller exits inefficiently late, and the trade probability is inefficiently high.
title Waiting for Trade in Markets with Aggregate Uncertainty
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06132