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Digital Markets

1 points by bendtb ↗ HN
Hello,

Why do some markets get digitized with direct business to consumer (eg books, cars and stocks) but others still need a broker in between (eg commodities, housing)?

It cannot be the financial size of the transaction, as banks do a lot without any humans involved. On the other hand, commodity markets are almost exclusively using brokers. Does it have to do with how standard a product it is perhaps? Although commodities should be quite standard…

I tried searching google scholar and scihub, but I couldn’t find anything that gave me any reasonable explanation.

2 comments

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verdverm
Politics, regulations, and entrenched interests. Cars are not really direct to consumer yet. Tesla is the exception and some states do not allow this practice, so people buy Tesla out of state to circumvent
bendtb
It is all fair points.

I am more interested in the WHY and the theory behind why some markets are digitalized and others are not. I appreciate it is probably a relatively new area of research, but given the number of digital efforts made by Silicon Valley to build the next “the Amazon for xyz” I would have guess there are some academic research available.