Frontier Advanced Seminar Series in Economics No. 15
Observational Learning and Information Disclosure in Search Markets
Speaker: Prof. Yiyi ZHOU (SUNY Stony Brook)
Host: Prof. Anzhou ZHANG (Liaoning University)
Introducer: Prof. Xiangjun MA (Liaoning University)
Time: March 10, 2023 (Friday), 9:00-10:40 (UTC +08:00)
Venue: Tencent Meeting (Meeting ID: 3007551 6895)
Language: Mandarin/English
Abstract：This paper studies the role of observational learning in search markets where buyers do not take the list price as a take-it-or-leave-it offer. Using a unique data from the Beijing housing market, we estimate a structural model in which buyers infer a seller’s reservation value from the home’s list price, time-on-market, and records of in-person home viewings by prior prospective buyers, after which they decide whether to view the home and how much to offer. We use the estimated model to quantify the welfare impact of different information disclosure rules. We find that buyer surplus is reduced, and seller surplus is increased on average if time-on-market information is disclosed. However, disclosing home-viewing information in addition to time-on-market information affects individual homes differently. We find that due to the disclosure of this additional information, buyers are slightly better off while sellers are slightly worse off on average.
Speaker Introduction: Yiyi ZHOU is an Associate Professor (tenured) from the Department of Economics at SUNY Stony Brook. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from University of Virginia and her Master’s degree from the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University. Her primary research interests are Industrial Organization and Environment Economics. Her research has been published, in Management Science, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Industrial Economics, and the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economist. She has delivered the courses of Industrial Economics, Empirical Industrial Economics, Health Economics, Managerial Economics, and Business Strategy.
