京都大学 大学院経済学研究科・経済学部

(Title):  ”Product-Harm Crises and Intermediaries in the Used Car Market"

Abstract: Used car markets are heavily intermediated: dealers acquire vehicles, set retail prices, and reallocate inventory through wholesale auctions. This paper studies how dealers respond to a product-harm crisis, exploiting the 2016 Mitsubishi Motors fuel-economy scandal in Japan, in which nearly identical affected models were sold under both the Mitsubishi and Nissan badges through an OEM arrangement. Comparing affected kei cars with unaffected ones before and after the disclosure, I find that prices fall in both wholesale auctions and retail listings, with substantially larger declines at wholesale. Retail declines are larger for Mitsubishi-badged than for Nissan-badged affected vehicles, and smaller at dealers affiliated with the affected brands than at independent dealers. Calibrating a monopolistic dealer pricing model to observed wholesale prices, retail prices, and sale probabilities, I find that households' valuations decline only at independent dealers, by similar magnitudes across the two brands. A decomposition further shows that inventory reallocation across dealers attenuates the market-wide price decline relative to within-dealer declines. A model of dealer trading in wholesale markets rationalizes this reallocation and highlights the wholesale market's role in absorbing demand shocks.