Bargaining Through Agents: An Experimental Study of Delegation and Commitment

While face-to-face bargaining has proven itself to be extremely efficient in the laboratory, it appears to break down often in the real world. This discrepancy, we assert, is explained by the fact that in the real world face-to-face bargaining is usually conducted not between principals but between the agents of principals. We find a substantial increase in inefficiency when bargaining is conducted through agents rather than through principals and offer an explanation for this rise in inefficiency. As such, this paper helps to shed light on the growing literature on delegation, commitment, and preference distortion games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, C92.     

Optimal Delegation

We analyse the design of decision rules by a principal who faces an informed but biased agent and who is unable to commit to contingent transfers. The contracting problem reduces to a delegation problem in which the principal commits to a set of decisions from which the agent chooses his preferred one. We characterize the optimal delegation set and perform comparative statics on the principal's willingness to delegate and the agent's discretion. We also provide conditions for interval delegation to be optimal and show that they are satisfied when the agent's preferences are sufficiently aligned. Finally, we apply our results to the regulation of a privately informed monopolist and to the design of legislatives rules.     

Bargaining regimes and wages in Portugal

In this paper we analyse the bargaining regime wage-effect in Portugal. The results indicate that the bargaining regime coverage is important in explaining the variability of wages. Wage differentials between bargaining regimes are substantial, a fact which may be related to a decentralised wage setting which prevails in Portugal. The highest wages are generated by multi-firm negotiations and the lowest are generated by sectoral contracts. Single-firm contracts align at an intermediate level in the ranking.Received: April 2001, Accepted: May 2002, JEL Classification: J31Correspondence to: Pedro T. PereiraWe are very grateful to an anonymous referee. Financial support from program PRAXIS XXI under grant PRAXIS/2/2.1/CSH/781/95 and FEDER is acknowledged. The third author also acknowledges financial support from program PRAXIS XXI under grant BD/3486/94 and from the University of the Azores.     

Gradualism in Bargaining and Contribution Games

This paper identifies a source of gradualism in bargaining and contribution games. In the bargaining games we examine, each party can opt out at any time, and the outside option outcome is assumed to depend on the offers made in the negotiation phase. Specifically, we assume that (1) making a concession in the negotiation phase increases the other party's outside option pay-off and (2) the outside option outcome induces an efficiency loss as compared with a negotiated agreement. The main finding is that the mere presence of such history-dependent outside options forces equilibrium concessions in the negotiation phase to be gradual, and the degree of gradualism is characterized. The model also applies to contribution games in which the outside option may be interpreted as the option to implement a partial project using the total contributions made so far.     

多任务下的协调和授权

在逆向选择框架中，我们考察多任务下两种激励的协调和对应授权问题。具体来说，我们主要关注三个问题：一是多任务时两种激励如何作用，以及决定的因素是什么；二是在多任务的框架中．授权发生基本机制是什么，激励的相互作用对于授权的影响是什么；三是在多任务的条件下利益关系和组织的权利结构是否存在对应的关系．利益冲突的增加是否有利于授权。     

Delegation and commitment in durable goods monopolies

This paper studies a simultaneous-move infinite-horizon delegation game in which the principal of a durable goods monopoly entrusts pricing decisions to a manager who enjoys consuming her monetary rewards but dislikes production effort. The delegation contract allows for continual interference with managerial incentives: in each period the principal rewards the manager according to her performance. We show that when the cost of delegation is low relative to profits, the principal can attain the precommitment price plan in a perfect rational expectations equilibrium. The paper analyzes the robustness of this result under alternative specifications of timing and objectives. We also provide a numerical characterization of the equilibrium strategies for the case of linear-quadratic payoffs.     

Delegation and Information Sharing in Cournot Duopoly

Information sharing in oligopoly has been analyzed by assuming that firms behave as a sole economic agent. In this paper it is assumed that ownership and management are separated. Contrary to the classical result of information sharing in a Cournot duopoly with private cost information, the paper shows that information sharing is no longer always a dominant strategy and expected consumer surplus is no longer always decreased. The paper determines the circumstances under which information is exchanged and analyzes its welfare consequences.      

Bargaining and separation costs in two-sided markets

A two-sided market is characterized by contract negotiations, bilateral exchanges between buyers and sellers. Separation costs endow trading partners with monopoly power, rendering this a market of bilateral monopolistic competition. Market equilibrium is defined by these negotiations, a matching of the two sides, and a set of prices; the costs of disagreement are endogenous. A bargaining strategy some players use is commitment to a position. Disagreements are possible and, contrary to the case of bilateral monopoly, these disagreements are not always inefficient.     

Social Comparisons in Ultimatum Bargaining

Experiments are used to examine the effects of social comparisons in ultimatum bargaining. We inform responders about the average offer before they decide whether to accept or reject their specific offer. This significantly increases offers and offer‐specific rejection probabilities. For comparison, we consider another change in informational conditions: telling responders the total pie is $30—ex ante it was either $15 or $30—affects offers and rejection probabilities roughly as much. Our results are consistent with people’s dislike for deviations from the norm of equity but inconsistent with fairness theories, where people dislike income disparity between themselves and their referents.     

Taxation and Wage Bargaining*

The paper analyzes the effects of personal taxes on wage bargaining It concludes that an increase in tax progressivity will normally increase union wage-bargaining pressure and so raise the equilibrium wage This is the opposite result to that recently derived by Creedy and McDonald (1990).     

Penalty Rates and Enterprise Bargaining

Industrial relations procedures in both Australia and New Zealand are changing from a system based on centralised arbitration towards enterprise level negotiation. This article considers how this change will affect overtime and other penalty rate payments. In particular, we show how, despite the existence of a legislative ‘safety net’, enterprise level negotiations can lead to the widespread removal of penalty rates, possibly to the detriment of both employees and employers. Such changes will, however, enhance competition and benefit consumers.     

Bargaining, coalitions and competition

We study a Gale-like matching model in a large exchange economy, in which trade takes place through non-cooperative bargaining in coalitions of finite size. Under essentially the same conditions of core equivalence, we show that the strategic equilibrium outcomes of our model coincide with the Walrasian allocations of the economy. Our method of proof makes use of the theory of the core. With respect to previous work, our positive implementation result applies to a substantially larger class of economies: the model relaxes differentiability and convexity of preferences, and also admits an arbitrary number of divisible and indivisible goods.     

Moral Hazard and Bargaining Power

Abstract. We introduce bargaining power in a moral hazard framework where parties are risk-neutral and the agent is financially constrained. We show that the same contract emerges if the concept of bargaining power is analyzed in either of the following three frameworks: in a standard principal–agent (P–A) framework by varying the agent's outside opportunity, in an alternating offer game, and in a generalized Nash-bargaining game. However, for sufficiently low levels of the agent's bargaining power, increasing it marginally does affect the equilibrium in the Nash-bargaining game, but not in the P–A model and in the alternating offer game.     

Bargaining and Sharing Innovative Knowledge

We consider the problem of bargaining over the disclosure of interimresearch knowledge between two participants in an R&D race for an ultimate,patentable invention. Licence fee schedules that are functions of the'amount of knowledge disclosed', by the leading to the laggingagent, are examined for their abilities to attain efficient outcomes andvarying shares of the surplus arising from disclosure. In hersequential-offers bargaining games, the uninformed buyer is able to elicitfull disclosures without sharing the incremental surplus with any type ofthe licensor, and thus do as well as a perfectly informed and discriminatingknowledge licensee.     

谈判能力与标价策略

厂商能够通过策略性地选择不标价销售,利用其较强的谈判能力获取更多的利益。当厂商谈判能力较弱时,厂商将选择标价以最大化其利润。考虑消费者的谈判成本,厂商选择不标价时,其利润和谈判能力呈倒U型关系。当厂商谈判能力过高时,由于消费者将无利可图而放弃购买,因而厂商将选择标价的策略。在一定条件下,厂商实施策略性不标价不是市场有效的,可以通过强制标价实现市场的有效性。