Mechanisms where intermediaries charge a commission fee and have the sellers set the price are widely used in practice e.g. by real estate agents, stock brokers, art galleries, or auction houses. We model competition between intermediaries in a dynamic random matching model, where in every...

We analyze the competitive effects of backward vertical integration by a partially vertically integrated firm that competes with non-integrated firms both upstream and downstream. We show that vertical integration is procompetitive under fairly general conditions. It can be anticompetitive only...

Mechanisms where sellers set the price and are charged a linear commission fee are widely used by real world intermediaries, e.g. by real estate brokers. Empirically these commission fees exhibit very little variance, both across heterogeneous regional markets and over time. So far, there is no...