A Quantitative Analysis of the Used-Car Market
定量研究了二手车市场的配置和福利效应，发现交易成本对交易量、配置和初级市场影响大，但对总消费者剩余和福利影响较小，对低估值家庭影响显著。
Quantitatively, we investigate the allocative and welfare effects of secondary markets for cars. An important source of gains from trade in these markets is the heterogeneity in the willingness to pay for higher-quality (newer) goods, but transaction costs are an impediment to instantaneous trade. Calibration of the model successfully matches several aggregate features of the US and French used-car markets. Counterfactual analyses show that transaction costs have a large effect on volume of trade, allocations, and the primary market. Aggregate effects on consumer surplus and welfare are relatively small, but the effect on lower-valuation households can be large.