How to Sell Hard Information

The seller of an asset has the option to buy hard information about the value of the asset from an intermediary. The seller can then disclose the acquired information before selling the asset in a competitive market. We study how the intermediary designs and sells hard information to robustly maximize her revenue across all equilibria. Even though the intermediary could use an accurate test that reveals the asset’s value, we show that robust revenue maximization leads to a noisy test with a continuum of possible scores. In addition, the intermediary always charges the seller for disclosing the test score to the market, but not necessarily for running the test. This enables the intermediary to robustly appropriate a significant share of the surplus resulting from the asset sale.

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Work Title How to Sell Hard Information
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. S. Nageeb Ali
  2. Nima Haghpanah
  3. Xiao Lin
  4. Ron Siegel
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Publication Date August 16, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjab024
Deposited July 26, 2022

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Version 1
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  • Created
  • Added selling_hard.pdf
  • Added Creator S Nageeb Ali
  • Added Creator N Haghpanah
  • Added Creator Xiao Lin
  • Added Creator Ron Siegel
  • Published
  • Updated Publisher Identifier (DOI) Show Changes
    Publisher Identifier (DOI)
    • https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjab024
  • Renamed Creator S. Nageeb Ali Show Changes
    • S Nageeb Ali
    • S. Nageeb Ali
  • Renamed Creator Nima Haghpanah Show Changes
    • N Haghpanah
    • Nima Haghpanah
  • Updated