Middlemen in Search Equilibrium

Middlemen versus Market Makers: A Theory of Competitive Exchange

We present a model in which the microstructure of trade in a commodity or asset is endogenously determined. Producers and consumers of a commodity (or buyers and sellers of an asset) who wish to trade can choose between two competing types of intermediaries: “middlemen” (dealer/brokers) and “market makers” (specialists). Market makers post publicly observable bid and ask prices, whereas the pri...

More on Middlemen: Equilibrium Entry and Efficiency in Intermediated Markets

This paper generalizes Rubinstein and Wolinsky’s model of middlemen (intermediation) by incorporating production and search costs, plus more general matching and bargaining. This allows us to study many new issues, including entry, efficiency and dynamics. In the benchmark model, equilibrium exists uniquely, and involves production and intermediation for some parameters but not others. Sometime...

Middlemen and the Allocation of Heterogeneous Goods

This paper presents a general equilibrium model in which middlemen emerge to facilitate trade in an environment of idiosyncratic tastes and heterogeneous goods. The gains to the traders can be measured along three dimensions: the rate of production, the time preference losses generated by the matching process, and the quality of the match between consumers’ preferences and the goods they ultima...

Competitive Equilibrium with Middlemen: An Empirical Study

Bargaining with Middlemen

In this paper, we consider a dynamic and decentralized market modeled by a noncooperative networked bargaining game. Our goal is to study how the network structure of the market and the role of middlemen influence the market’s efficiency and fairness. We introduce the concept of limit stationary equilibrium in a general trading network and use it to analyze how endogenous delay emerges in trade...