IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esx/essedp/8911.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Imperfect Competition and Efficiency in Lemons Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Muthoo, Abhinay
  • Mutuswami, Suresh

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of competition on the degree of inefficiency in lemons markets. More precisely, we characterize the second-best mechanism (i.e., the optimal mechanism with private information) in a stylized lemons market with finite numbers of buyers and sellers. We then study the relationship between the degree of efficiency of the second-best mechanism and market competitiveness. The relationship between the first-best and second-best mechanisms is also explored.

Suggested Citation

  • Muthoo, Abhinay & Mutuswami, Suresh, 2007. "Imperfect Competition and Efficiency in Lemons Markets," Economics Discussion Papers 8911, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:8911
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.essex.ac.uk/8911/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maarten C. W. Janssen & Santanu Roy, 2002. "Dynamic Trading in a Durable Good Market with Asymmetric Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(1), pages 257-282, February.
    2. Vincent, Daniel R., 1989. "Bargaining with common values," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 47-62, June.
    3. Maarten C. W. Janssen & José Luis Moraga-González, 2004. "Strategic Pricing, Consumer Search and the Number of Firms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 1089-1118.
    4. Robert Evans, 1989. "Sequential Bargaining with Correlated Values," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(4), pages 499-510.
    5. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    6. Samuelson, William F, 1984. "Bargaining under Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 995-1005, July.
    7. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    8. Alessandro Lizzeri & Igal Hendel, 1999. "Adverse Selection in Durable Goods Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1097-1115, December.
    9. Gresik, Thomas A. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1989. "The rate at which a simple market converges to efficiency as the number of traders increases: An asymptotic result for optimal trading mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 304-332, June.
    10. Wilson, Charles A, 1979. "Equilibrium and Adverse Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 313-317, May.
    11. Rustichini, Aldo & Satterthwaite, Mark A & Williams, Steven R, 1994. "Convergence to Efficiency in a Simple Market with Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(5), pages 1041-1063, September.
    12. Gul, Faruk & Postlewaite, Andrew, 1992. "Asymptotic Efficiency in Large Exchange Economies with Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1273-1292, November.
    13. Muthoo, Abhinay & Mutuswami, Suresh, 2005. "Competition and Efficiency in Markets with Quality Uncertainty," Economics Discussion Papers 9981, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    14. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    15. Cremer, Jacques & McLean, Richard P, 1988. "Full Extraction of the Surplus in Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1247-1257, November.
    16. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-641, August.
    17. Stahl, Dale O, II, 1989. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Sequential Consumer Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 700-712, September.
    18. Charles Wilson, 1980. "The Nature of Equilibrium in Markets with Adverse Selection," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 108-130, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Klaus Kultti & Eeva Mauring & Juuso Vanhala & Timo Vesala, 2015. "Adverse Selection In Dynamic Matching Markets," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(2), pages 115-133, April.
    2. Yuk Ying Chang & Martin Young, 2015. "Dissipative Competition: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 169-198, June.

    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. Muthoo, Abhinay & Mutuswami, Suresh, 2005. "Competition and Efficiency in Markets with Quality Uncertainty," Economics Discussion Papers 9981, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    2. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2011. "Competition and the signaling role of prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 412-425, July.
    3. Maarten Janssen & Santanu Roy, 2004. "On durable goods markets with entry and adverse selection," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 552-589, August.
    4. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo, 2016. "Dynamic adverse selection and the supply size," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 233-242.
    5. Camargo, Braz & Lester, Benjamin, 2014. "Trading dynamics in decentralized markets with adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 534-568.
    6. Barsanetti, Bruno & Camargo, Braz, 2022. "Signaling in dynamic markets with adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    7. Kawai, Keiichi, 2014. "Dynamic market for lemons with endogenous quality choice by the seller," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 152-162.
    8. Manuel Adelino & Kristopher Gerardi & Barney Hartman-Glaser, 2016. "Are Lemons Sold First? Dynamic Signaling in the Mortgage Market," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2016-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    9. Song, Yangwei, 2022. "Approximate Bayesian Implementation and Exact Maxmin Implementation: An Equivalence," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 362, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    10. Kim, Kyungmin, 2017. "Information about sellers' past behavior in the market for lemons," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 365-399.
    11. Roberto Serrano, 2007. "Bargaining," Working Papers 2007-06, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    12. Jang, Inkee & Kang, Kee-Youn, 2021. "Adverse selection and costly information acquisition in asset markets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    13. Giuseppe, DE FEO & Jean, HINDRIKS, 2005. "Efficiency of Competition in Insurance Markets with Adverse Selection," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2005042, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques.
    14. Izquierdo, Segismundo S. & Izquierdo, Luis R., 2007. "The impact of quality uncertainty without asymmetric information on market efficiency," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 858-867, August.
    15. Christian Pietro & Marco Maria Sorge, 2018. "Outside (option) in the orchard: lemons or peaches?," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 45(4), pages 555-564, December.
    16. Blouin, Max R., 2003. "Quality undersupply and oversupply," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 130-139, March.
    17. Bandyopadhyay, Siddhartha, 2013. "Market thickness, prices and honesty: A quality demand trap," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 52-59.
    18. Anindya Ghose, 2005. "Used Good Trade Patterns: A Cross-Country Comparison of Electronic Secondary Markets," Working Papers 05-19, NET Institute, revised Oct 2005.
    19. Dang, Tri Vi, 2008. "Bargaining with endogenous information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 339-354, May.
    20. F. Adriani & LG Deidda, 2004. "Few bad apples or plenty of lemons: which makes it harder to market plums?," Working Paper CRENoS 200413, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:esx:essedp:8911. 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: Essex Economics Web Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edessuk.html .

    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.