Signaling in a Competing Auctions Model

Speaker：CAI Xiaoming, Assistant Professor, HSBC Business School, Peking University

Host：DAI Yun, Assistant Professor, Lingnan College, SYSU

Time and Date： 16:15-17:45，December 4, 2020

Location：Third Floor, Lingnan Hall

Language：English+Chinese 

Abstract:

We study a market with search frictions where sellers differ in the quality of the good they provide and post auctions with reserve prices. Buyers can only observe the reserve prices but not quality. We show under what conditions, the reserve prices can signal the quality of the good. When the good is an inspection good, in a separating equilibrium, high quality sellers post a reserve price below their own value to signal their confidence that -after inspection- buyers will see that the good has a high quality and will bid accordingly. Low quality sellers set their reserve value at their own valuation.

Profile of the Speaker 

Xiaoming Cai

Ph.D. in Economics, VU University Amsterdam

Research Interests: Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, Search and Matching

Biography

Fields
Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, Search and Matching

Education
Ph.D. in Economics, Tinbergen Institute, VU University Amsterdam, November 2015
M.Phil. in Economics, Tinbergen Institute, University of Amsterdam, Cum Laude, 2010
B.A. in International Studies, School of International Studies, Peking University, 2008
B.S. in Mathematics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, 2008

Publications
Efficiency of Wage Bargaining with On-the-job Search, forthcoming at International Economic Review
Search Frictions, Competing Mechanisms and Optimal Market Segmentation, Journal of Economic Theory (2017), Pages 453-473, (with Pieter Gautier and Ronald Wolthoff)
Predictable recoveries, Economica (2016) 83, 307–337, (with Wouter Den Haan and Jonathan Pinder)
Minimum prices in a model with search frictions and price posting, Economics Letters, Volume 135, October 2015, Pages 61-64.
Collective versus decentralized wage bargaining and the efficient allocation of resources, Labour Economics, Volume 26, January 2014, pp. 34-42. (with Pieter A. Gautier, Coen N. Teulings, and Makoto Watanabe)

Working Papers
Search, Sorting, and Screening, (Job Market Paper)  (with Pieter Gautier and Ronald Wolthoff),Multiple Applications, Competing Mechanisms, and Market Power. (with James Albrecht, Pieter Gautier, and Susan Vroman), R and R at Journal of Economic Theory
Meetings and Mechanisms, (with Pieter Gautier and Ronald Wolthoff), submitted

https://english.phbs.pku.edu.cn/2020/fulltime_0908/136.html