Data provision to an informed seller

A monopoly seller is privately and imperfectly informed about the buyer's value of the product. A designer can provide the seller with additional information, which the seller uses to price discriminate the buyer. We demonstrate the difficulty of screening the seller's information: When the buyer's value is binary, no combination of buyer surplus and seller profit can be implemented other than those achieved by providing the same information to all seller types. We use the result to characterize the set of implementable welfare outcomes and demonstrate the trade-off between buyer surplus and efficiency.

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Publication Details

Journal
Games and Economic Behavior
Published
2025-06-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.002
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.07

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article

Data provision to an informed seller

Alex Smolin, Shota Ichihashi
1 citations
Games and Economic Behavior
Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
2.07
article

Data provision to an informed seller

Alex Smolin, Shota Ichihashi
article en
1 citations

Abstract

A monopoly seller is privately and imperfectly informed about the buyer's value of the product. A designer can provide the seller with additional information, which the seller uses to price discriminate the buyer. We demonstrate the difficulty of screening the seller's information: When the buyer's value is binary, no combination of buyer surplus and seller profit can be implemented other than those achieved by providing the same information to all seller types. We use the result to characterize the set of implementable welfare outcomes and demonstrate the trade-off between buyer surplus and efficiency.

Games and Economic BehaviorVol. 153
Queen's University (CA), Toulouse School of Economics (FR)
Carnegie Mellon University, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Concordia University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of California, Irvine, Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College
Openalex Percentile: Top 12%
Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
2.07
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