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Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events.

Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.

Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.

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About this event

We study sequential information acquisition by a buyer and seller before bilateral trade. Traders flexibly and costlessly choose experiments about their independent private values. Observing experiments but not realizations, a designer selects a robust trading mechanism maximizing expected gains from trade. We construct efficient equilibria in which the first mover partially learns her state and the second mover acquires full information. Both traders strictly prefer moving first, regardless of initial ownership. Commitment through partial learning secures a larger share of the gains from trade, leaving the follower her minimum guaranteed continuation payoff.