Inefficient Screening in Online Rental Markets*
Kirysheva I. Nora V.
September 2022John Wiley and Sons Inc
Journal of Industrial Economics
2022#70Issue 3752 - 774 pp.
We study a home rental market where hosts compete in prices and decide which guests to accept. Such screening results in inefficiently many rejections and can reduce welfare. In a unique symmetric equilibrium, hosts randomize over prices so that it may be unprofitable for them to accept some efficient trades. Moreover, every equilibrium is inefficient when there are few hosts. We further show that screening increases welfare when there are enough hosts or when the potential loss of surplus from inefficient trades is high. We discuss the implications of our findings to online platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway.
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Department of Economics, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
Department of Economics
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026