Collaborative Research on Laboratory Markets with Posted Prices: Discounts, Search Costs, and Demand Shocks

[9320044 .霍尔特]报价交易机构是卖方在接受或放弃的基础上公布价格的机构。发布报价的结果提供了与结构较松散的双重拍卖实验中的交易进行比较的基础。这个项目的动机来自于贴出的实验中的三个程式化事实。第一种涉及明确的价格操纵阴谋，可以在实验室发布报价的情况下提高价格。在可比较的双重拍卖中，卖方共谋的无效，激发了人们提出的研究，即卖方提供私人折扣的机会是否削弱了贴出报价市场中的共谋。相关实验将检验合同限制对折扣和行业协会报告的影响。第二个程式化的事实是，报价后市场对需求冲击的反应不佳。这一观察结果的一个含义是，定价过程可能会产生价格刚性，从而产生凯恩斯主义的宏观经济后果。拟议中的实验涉及在一般均衡框架下，以法定货币同时公布工资和价格。其中一个目标是研究名义货币冲击的实际影响。第三个问题源于贴出报价市场普遍较弱的竞争趋势，这种趋势表明，如果再加上一些小缺陷，比如搜索成本，价格可能会大幅上涨。提议的实验将评估这个（“钻石”）悖论的几个最新理论解决方案，即小的缺陷可以产生垄断价格。

9320044 Holt The posted-offer trading institution is one in which sellers post prices on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Posted-offer results provide a basis of comparison with trading in less structured double-auction experiments. This project is motivated by three stylized facts from posted-offer experiments. The first involves explicit price-fixing conspiracies which can raise prices in laboratory posted-offer settings. The ineffectiveness of seller conspiracies in comparable double-auctions motivates the proposed work on whether collusion in posted-offer markets is undermined by opportunities for sellers to offer private discounts. Related experiments will examine the effects of contractual restrictions on discounting and on trade association reports. A second stylized fact is the poor response of posted-offer markets to demand shocks. One implication of this observation is that the price-posting process could generate price rigidities with Keynesian macroeconomic consequences. The proposed experiments involve simultaneous posting of wages and prices in a general equilibrium framework with fiat money. One goal is to study the real effects of nominal monetary shocks. The third issue arises from the generally weak competitive tendencies of posted-offer markets which suggest that prices might be raised sharply by the addition of small imperfections, such as search costs. The proposed experiments will evaluate several recent theoretical resolutions of this ("Diamond") paradox, i.e., that small imperfections can produce monopoly prices.