Abstract

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 this information before selling the asset in a competitive market. We study how the intermediary designs and sells hard information to robustly maximize the intermediary's 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.

中文翻译：

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如何出售硬信息*

摘要

资产的卖方可以选择从中介购买有关资产价值的硬信息。然后，卖方可以在竞争性市场中出售资产之前披露此信息。我们研究了中介如何设计和销售硬信息，以在所有均衡中稳健地最大化中介的收入。尽管中介可以使用准确的测试来揭示资产的价值，但我们表明，稳健的收入最大化会导致带有连续可能分数的嘈杂测试。此外，中介总是向卖方收取向市场披露考试成绩的费用，但不一定是为了进行考试。这使中介机构能够有力地挪用资产出售产生的大部分盈余。