A Model of Non-Stationary Dynamic Price Competition with an Application to Platform Design

I develop a tractable framework for conducting platform design counterfactuals in settings where many sellers compete and set prices dynamically, using approaches developed in the recent literature on Oblivious Equilibria. As an initial application, I use the model to study a simple platform design counterfactual using data from the secondary event ticket market on Stubhub.com where the perishability of the product being sold results in sellers facing a dynamic and non-stationary pricing problem. Currently, most transactions happen at low prices close to the event. Motivated by some simple theoretical examples, I investigate how the dynamics of prices, the timing of transactions, platform revenues and participant surplus would be affected if a commission structure that encouraged earlier transactions was introduced