This paper analyzes the effects of taxation on information acquisition and bilateral trade in decentralized markets. We show that a profit tax and a transaction tax have opposite implications for equilibrium outcome in bargaining. A marginal increase of a transaction tax increases the incentive...

This paper shows that a transaction tax makes trades in decentralized markets more information sensitive and enlarges the range of information costs for which the equilibrium exhibits private information acquisition and endogenous adverse selection. A transaction tax reduces the probability of...