Buyer‐Optimal Platform Design
研究了平台如何匹配卖家和买家，发现当低价值买家较少时，买方最优匹配是随机负向匹配，导致效率损失。
ABSTRACT A platform matches a unit mass of sellers, each owning a single product of heterogeneous quality, to a unit mass of buyers with differing valuations for unit‐quality. After matching, sellers make take‐it‐or‐leave‐it price‐offers to buyers. Initially, valuations of buyers are only known to them and the platform, but sellers make inferences from the matching algorithm. The efficient matching is positive assortative, but buyer‐optimal matchings are stochastically negative assortative when there are few low‐value buyers (i.e., compared to lower‐quality sellers, high‐quality ones are matched to buyers with lower expected valuation). Although everyone trades, generating rents for the side lacking bargaining power results in inefficient matching.