Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: May, 2014, Volume 82, Issue 3

Decentralized Trading With Private Information

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA8911
p. 1055-1091

Mikhail Golosov, Guido Lorenzoni, Aleh Tsyvinski

The paper studies how asset prices are determined in a decentralized market with asymmetric information about asset values. We consider an economy in which a large number of agents trade two assets in bilateral meetings. A fraction of the agents has private information about the asset values. We show that, over time, uninformed agents can elicit information from their trading partners by making small offers. This form of experimentation allows the uninformed agents to acquire information as long as there are potential gains from trade in the economy. As a consequence, the economy converges to a Pareto efficient allocation.


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Supplement to "Decentralized Trading with Private Information"

Appendix containing proofs omitted from the manuscript.