Beautiful Lemons: Adverse Selection in Durable-Goods Markets with Sorting
研究发现二手耐用品市场中，外观质量高的商品可能隐藏更严重的逆向选择问题，即未观察到的质量更低。通过理论模型和消费者支出调查数据验证，对广告和消费者决策有启示。
We document a basic characteristic of adverse selection in secondhand markets for durable goods: goods with higher observed quality may have more adverse selection and hence lower unobserved quality. We provide a simple theoretical model to demonstrate this result, which is a consequence of the interaction of sorting between drivers over observed quality and adverse selection over unobserved quality. We then offer empirical support using data on secondhand prices and repair rates of used cars from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and discuss a number of implications for everyday advertising and consumer questions. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2495 . This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing.