【Job Talk】Playing Favorites with Inattentive Buyers
2025/12/29
研討會日期 : 2025-12-29
時間 : 10:30
主講人 : Ms. Dhongkyu Yoon (尹東珪)
地點 : Conference Room B110
主持人 : Professor Yi-Hsuan Lin
演講者簡介 : Ms. Yoon is expected to receive her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Washington in 2026. Her research fields are Microeconomic Theory (Mechanism Design) and Applied Microeconomics. She is applying for a position of the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica now.
演講摘要 : We study a seller's optimal mechanism when faced with two ex-ante identical buyers who can flexibly choose what type of information to acquire before purchase. We show that the seller may optimally create exclusivity by offering different price-allocation schedules so that one buyer acquires precise information while the other chooses to remain uninformed. The core tradeoff is between rent extraction and trade probability: exclusivity strengthens incentives to acquire information for one buyer but lowers the overall likelihood of trade, while equal treatment maximizes trade at the expense of weaker learning. Comparing mechanisms, we find that sequential offers are optimal when rent extraction is paramount, while symmetric simultaneous offers are optimal when trade probability is more valuable. The distinction arises only under flexible information acquisition, highlighting how timing and exclusivity interact with buyers' learning incentives to generate asymmetric treatment of symmetric buyers.
