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e, and by implication, the value of the marketing services which brokers provide to sellers. Our results indicate that indeed buyers who use brokers do pay more for their homes than those who do not buy through a broker. But our results also imply that it is not because these buyers have used a broker. Rather, this group of buyers would have paid a higher price regardless of the means by which the purchase was consummated. These buyers have higher ines, are more likely to be from out of town, are more likely to have employer assistance in the purchaseall factors that lead them to pay more for a house, but also to make them more likely to use a broker in purchasing their home. When the decision to use a broker is accounted for, these buyers do not wind up paying more for their homes, and there is some evidence that they actually 3 pay less than a parable buyer who buys without an agent39。s results indicate that with real estate firms of parable size, brokers who list parable properties for higher prices than peting brokers tend to realize significantly higher selling prices. The higher selling prices tend to be associated with transactions involving executive transfers and brokerarranged secondary financing. These results may, in turn, indicate that brokers obtain higher prices when dealing with buyers who are both less knowledgeable about local market conditions and less sensitive to price. Yavas and Colwell (1994) suggest that selling price may also be, at least to some degree, a function of the type of broker listing arrangement used by the seller. In a study of the residential market, Jud (1983) estimates the demand for real estate brokerage services. Using housing transactions data from three urban areas in North Carolina, Jud finds that brokers do not affect the prices of the houses which they sell, although they do appear to influence the level of housing consumed by buyers. In a subsequent study, Jud and Frew (1986), using different data, find that brokers do obtain higher prices for the homes they sell. Evidence is also presented 4 that brokerassisted buyers have a greater demand for houses than their nonbrokerassisted counterparts. Their results lead them to conclude that broker intermediation has an effect analogous to that of advertising in markets with imperfect information. More recent research by Turnbull and Sirmans (1993) examines the extent to which differences in information and search costs are related in housing prices. Using data from the Baton Rouge market area, Turnbull and Sirmans pare the prices paid by firsttime and outoftown buyers to the prices paid for parable housing by more knowledgeable, local and repeat homebuyers. Their results indicate that home prices are similar across buyers with different information sets and search Costs. Since these were all brokerassisted transactions, Tarnbull and Sirmans conclude that existing brokerage institutions, such as the MLS, successfully eliminate the potential price effects of asymmetric information and, thereby, improve the efficiency of the housing market. It isnot possible, however, to determine from this study whether price differences exist between brokerassisted and nonbrokerassisted transactions. Although selling prices are not pared, a study by Baryla and Zumpano (1995), for the first tim