경쟁적 병목시장에서 판매자의 감추어진 행동과 유인설계 연구: 상품관리에서 도덕적 해이와 유인기제

초록

In two-sided online markets, platforms or buyers can hardly observe sellers’ effort in commodity management due to the features of anonymous online trade. Asymmetric information from hidden actions makes sellers prone to moral hazard. To mitigate sellers’ moral hazard, platforms introduce and operate various economic incentive mechanisms. This study examines platform competition in adopting incentive mechanisms when sellers’ commodity management effort is unobservable by buyers or platforms. We construct a standard linear location model in a competitive bottleneck market with single-homing buyers, multi-homing sellers, and two competing platforms. We assume two types of buyers differentiated by their sensitivity to commodity management, and introduce hidden action of commodity management effort by sellers to capture information asymmetry. We characterize a symmetric equilibrium under platform competition with an incentive mechanism moderating sellers’ moral hazard in commodity management. The main findings are as follows. First, incentive mechanisms restore buyer surplus, platform profits, seller surplus, and total surplus to the socially efficient level under symmetric information when the participation constraint is binding. Second, when the incentive compatibility constraint is binding, sellers require excess profit for commodity management. Third, when the incentive compatibility constraint is binding, sensitive buyers pay more compared to the case of information symmetry. Fourth, extra revenue paid by the sensitive buyers is split between sellers and platforms. Fifth, the higher surplus for managing sellers represents informational rents provided by the incentive mechanism to mitigate the problem of hidden actions.

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