This note constructs an efficient mechanism for finding the best candidate for a committee from a sequence of potential candidates. Committee members have independent private values information about the quality of the candidate. The mechanism selects the best candidate according to the standard...

This paper studies a decentralized, dynamic matching and bargaining market: buyers and sellers are matched into pairs. Traders exit the market at a constant rate, inducing search costs (frictions). All price offers are made by sellers. Despite the fact that sellers have all the bargaining power...

In persuasion problems where the receiver's action is one-dimensional and his utility is single-peaked, optimal signals are characterized by duality, based on a first-order approach to the receiver's problem. A signal is optimal if and only if the induced joint distribution over states and...

We examine the effects of informational intermediation by a third party 'infomediary' in a search model with heterogeneous seller qualities and asymmetric information. The infomediary earns revenue by selling a list of accredited sellers (a 'guidebook') to buyers and selling accreditations to...

We endogenize the trade mechanism in a search economy with many homogenous sellers and many heterogenous buyers of unobservable type. We study how heterogeneity and the traders' continuation values - which are endogenous - influence the sellers' choice of trade mechanism. Sellers trade off the...

Principals seek to trade with agents by posting incentive contracts in a search environment. A contract solves the ex ante search problem, and adverse selection and moral hazard ex post. We fully characterise the equilibrium for quasi linear preferences, and derive some comparative statics. If...

We investigate the effect of search frictions on labor market sorting by constructing a model which is in line with recent evidence that employers collect a pool of applicants before interviewing a subset of them. In this environment, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for sorting...

This chapter surveys the literature on the microstructure of housing markets. It considers one-sided search, random matching, and directed search models. It also examines the bargaining that takes place once a match has occurred, with the bargaining taking various forms, including two-party...

Prices usually adjust much faster when costs increase than when costs decrease. The mechanism driving this Rockets-and-Feathers phenomenon is not well understood despite of ample empirical evidence for its existence.We use simple experimental markets with and without consumer search and either...

We implement a simple two-shop search model in the laboratory with the aim of testing if consumers behave differently in equivalent situations, where prices are displayed either as net prices or as gross prices with discounts. We compare search behavior in base treatments (where both shops post...