THE HIDDEN COST OF BARGAINING: EVIDENCE FROM A CHEATING-PRONE MARKETPLACE

It is widely believed that successful bargaining helps consumers increase their surplus. We present evidence from a field experiment showing that bargaining over price reduces buyer surplus in a marketplace where sellers cheat on the weight whose value may more than offset the price discount. Our results show that bargaining entails hidden costs since sellers cheat significantly more when buyers bargain than not and they cheat significantly more when bargaining succeeds than fails. Overall bargaining reduces buyer surplus than not bargaining. Our result is relevant for credence goods markets where bargaining over prices may induce sellers to “undertreat” more.     

Codetermination,Price Competition and the Network Industry

This research develops a tractable two‐stage non‐cooperative game with complete information describing the behaviour of price‐setting firms that must choose to be profit maximisers or bargainers under codetermination in a network industry with horizontal product differentiation. The existing theoretical literature has already shown that codetermination might arise as the endogenous market outcome in a strategic competitive quantity‐setting duopoly. In sharp contrast with this result, the present article shows that codetermination does never emerge as a Nash equilibrium in a price‐setting non‐network duopoly. Then, it aims at highlighting the role of network externalities in determining changes of paradigm of the game and letting codetermination become a sub‐game perfect Nash equilibrium when prices are strategic substitutes or strategic complements. This equilibrium may be Pareto efficient. Results allow distinguishing between mandatory codetermination and voluntary codetermination. The article also proposes a model of endogenous codetermination according to which every firm may choose to bargain with its own corresponding union bargaining unit only whether the firm's bargaining strength is exactly the profit‐maximising one. The equilibrium outcomes emerging in this case range from a uniform Nash equilibrium, in which both firms are codetermined, to mixed Nash equilibria, in which only one of them chooses to be codetermined. These results are ‘network depending’ and do not hold in a non‐network duopoly.     

Price search and spatial competition

In this paper we study a model where two spatially scattered sellers face a population of consumers dispersed over a given geographical area; they have to incur a transaction cost to place their purchase order. Moreover these consumers have imperfect knowledge of prices, but obtain full information about prices at the first shop they solicit. We study price competition between these firms. The main outcomes of our analysis are as follows. First we show that whenever a price equilibrium exists for given locations of firms, it will necessarily display price dispersion. Second we study location configurations which ensure the existence of a price equilibrium. Furthermore we show that when it exists, a price equilibrium is unique. Finally we analyze firms revenues when merchants anticipate the consequences of their locational choice on subsequent price competition. Then we find that there is an incentive for a firm to get as close as possible to its competitor.     

Stores

Summary There is scope and incentive for stores to endogenously arise in an exchange economy when agents possess different levels of bargaining power and coalition formation is costly. In the absence of stores, agents face a trading lottery where the expected outcome for an individual agent depends upon his relative bargaining strength. By setting appropriate, preannounced prices, a store can profitably offer relatively weak bargainers trading opportunities which they prefer to the trading lottery. While relatively weak bargainers are attracted to the store, relatively strong bargainers prefer the trading lottery to the store. Thus, the simultaneous existence of barter and mediated trade is explained.The work reported here was conceived while both authors were visiting the University of Southern California. We thank Martine Quinzii and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

PLATFORM COMPETITION WITH ENDOGENOUS HOMING

We consider two-sided markets in which consumers and firms endogenously determine whether they single-home, multi-home, or exit the market. We find that the competitive bottleneck allocation in which consumers single-home and firms multi-home is always an equilibrium. In addition, we find equilibria with multi-homing and single-homing on each side of the market. However, unlike the standard pricing result where the side that multi-homes faces higher prices, we find that lower prices coincide with multi-homing: agents find multi-homing more attractive when faced with lower prices. We also show that endogenous homing can induce straddle pricing which deters price undercutting between platforms.     

Strategic Pricing, Consumer Search and the Number of Firms

We examine an oligopoly model where some consumers engage in costly non-sequential search to discover prices. There are three distinct price-dispersed equilibria characterized by low, moderate and high search intensity. The effects of an increase in the number of firms on search behaviour, expected prices, price dispersion and welfare are sensitive (i) to the equilibrium consumers' search intensity, and (ii) to the status quo number of firms. For instance, when consumers search with low intensity, an increase in the number of firms reduces search, does not affect expected price, leads to greater price dispersion and reduces welfare. In contrast, when consumers search with high intensity, increased competition results in more search and lower prices when the number of competitors in the market is low to begin with, but in less search and higher prices when the number of competitors is large. Duopoly yields identical expected price and price dispersion but higher welfare than an infinite number of firms.     

Can a decline in search cost increase prices?

This paper provides a new explanation of why a decline in consumers’ price search cost may not lead to lower prices. In a duopoly with price competition, I show that when some consumers are captive to one firm, there may be a non‐monotonic relationship between search cost and market power; firms may charge high prices with higher probability and the average price charged may be higher when consumers’ price search cost falls below a critical level. Furthermore, when firms have asymmetric captive segments, expected prices charged by each firm may move in opposite directions as search cost declines.     

Competition and confidentiality: Signaling quality in a duopoly when there is universal private information

We model non-cooperative signaling by two firms that compete over a continuum of consumers, assuming each consumer has private information about the intensity of her preferences for the firms' respective products and each firm has private information about its own product's quality. We characterize a symmetric separating equilibrium in which each firm's price reveals its respective product quality. We show that the equilibrium prices, the difference between those prices, the associated outputs, and profits are all increasing functions of the ex ante probability of high safety. If horizontal product differentiation is sufficiently great then equilibrium prices and profits are higher under incomplete information about quality than if quality were commonly known. Thus, while signaling imposes a distortionary loss on a monopolist using price to signal quality, duopolists may benefit from the distortion as it can reduce competition. Finally, average quality is lower since signaling quality redistributes demand towards low-quality firms.     

Franchise fee,contract bargaining,and economic growth

This paper combines the industrial organization (IO) theory and the R&D-based endogenous growth theory in a model of a successive imperfect competitive economy. The current study assumes that firms between upstream and downstream industries bargain over both the price of intermediate goods and the franchise fee. Findings show that the intermediate goods firm with a R&D sector charges the price equal to the marginal cost. Economic rent may also be partly transferred into the franchise fee determined by the relative bargaining power. In particular, the traditional double marginalization result, such as in Spengler (1950), does not take place here due to the above-mentioned bargaining scheme. Finally, this work shows that final goods firms in vertically linked industries play an important role in an economic growth model. The more bargaining power the final goods firms have (or the more returns to specialization upstream firms have, or the less substitution elasticity the final goods have), the more the economy grows. However, the consumer preference for diversity seemingly does not affect economic growth rate.     

Costly Search, Capacity Constraints, and Bertrand Equilibrium Price Dispersion

This article analyzes the impact of transaction (search) costs and capacity constraints in an almost competitive market with homogeneous firms that compete on price. We characterize conditions under which Nash equilibria with price dispersion exist; in equilibrium, firms play pure strategies in prices and consumers adopt a symmetric mixed search strategy. Price dispersion is possible even though consumers all have the same search cost and valuation for the item and prices charged by all firms are common knowledge.     

An experimental study of price dispersion

We report an experiment examining a simple clearinghouse model that generates price dispersion. According to this model, price dispersion arises because of consumer heterogeneity—some consumers are “informed” and simply buy from the firm offering the lowest price, while the remaining consumers are “captive” and shop based on considerations other than price. In our experiment we observe substantial and persistent price dispersion. We find that, as predicted, an increase in the fraction of informed consumers leads to more competitive pricing for all consumers. We also find, as predicted, that when more firms enter the market, prices to informed consumers become more competitive while prices to captive customers become less competitive. Thus, our experiment provides strong support for the model's comparative static predictions about how changes in market structure affect pricing.     

The role of strategic uncertainty in games: An experimental study of cheap talk and contracts in the Nash demand game

We utilise results from a human-subjects experiment to examine the connection between strategic uncertainty and outcomes in games. Our basic game is a Nash demand game where one player has an outside option available. A “chat” treatment allows bargainers to send cheap-talk messages prior to playing the basic game, and in a “contracts” treatment, they can additionally propose and accept binding contracts. We propose that strategic uncertainty comprises at least two facets: “coordination-type”, which is lower in the chat game than in the basic game, and “rationality-type”, which is lower in the contracts game than in the chat game. We find that both types of strategic uncertainty impact bargaining outcomes: moving from the basic game to the chat game, and thence to contracts, improves several aspects of outcomes, such as higher efficiency, less opting out and less under-demanding. Other results include a treatment effect on the types of agreements that are reached.     

The Efficiency of Direct Public Involvement in Environmental Policymaking: An Experimental Test

In collaborative negotiation, stakeholder representatives are charged with the development of a mutually acceptable set of public policies. Although this approach has become popular in environmental negotiations, little is known about the characteristics of the outcomes that are reached. In this paper, we employ an Edgeworth box framework to investigate the nature of bargaining over public goods (environmental policies) that have multiple attributes. We then design and conduct laboratory experiments within this framework to test whether negotiated outcomes satisfy standard axiomatic bargaining predictions under a variety of conditions. Specifically, we test whether two parties with Pareto inefficient endowments of two goods will trade to Pareto improving and Pareto efficient outcomes, and to the Nash bargain in particular. We vary whether the Nash bargain coincides with or diverges from the outcome that maximizes the joint payoff, or the outcome that equalizes payoffs, and whether subjects are provided full or partial information. We find that bargainers reach Pareto improving and efficient outcomes across treatments, but withdraw support for the Nash bargain when it generates unequal payments or when payoff information is private. We conclude that this experimental framework offers a promising method for studying multi-attribute negotiations.     

Quality competition,welfare, and regulation

In this paper, we study the supply of quality in imperfectly competitive markets, and explore the role of regulation in markets where firms may use both quality and price to compete for customers. In a model where firms first choose qualities and then prices, we find that quality decisions have strategic effects: firms react to quality disadvantages by price reductions. Because of this strategic effect, firms do not have the correct incentive to set socially efficient quality levels. Price and quality competition results in a socially suboptimal quality level. Efficiency can be restored by lump-sum transfers and price regulatory policies. Simple price regulation may result in lower price and higher quality.We thank Nicholas Economides, Randall Ellis, Thomas McGuire, Michael Riordan, and Monika Schnitzer for discussing various issues in this research with us. We are also grateful to a referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The first author acknowledges support from the Management Science Group, Department of Veterans Affairs at Bedford, Massachusetts. The ideas here do not represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.     

A laboratory study of advertising and price competition

We use a laboratory experiment to study advertising and pricing behavior in a market where consumers differ in price sensitivity. Equilibrium in this market entails variation in the number of firms advertising and price dispersion in advertised prices. We vary the cost to advertise as well as varying the number of competing firms. Theory predicts that advertising costs act as a facilitating device: higher costs increase firm profits at the expense of consumers. We find that higher advertising costs decrease demand for advertising and raise advertised prices, as predicted. Further, this comes at the expense of consumers. However, advertising strategies are more aggressive than theory predicts with the result that firm profits do not increase.     

Wage Bargaining,Privatisation, Ability to Pay and Outside Options: Evidence from Hungary

This article examines the determinants of short-term wage dynamics, using a sample of large Hungarian companies for 1996–99. We test the basic implications of an efficient contract model of bargaining between incumbent employees and managers, which the data do not reject. In particular, there are structural differences between the ownership sectors consistent with our prior knowledge on relative bargaining strength and unionisation measures. Stronger bargaining position of workers leads to higher ability to pay elasticity of wages, and lower outside option elasticity. Our results indicate that while bargaining position of workers in domestic privatised firms may be weaker than in the state sector, the more robust difference relates to state sector workers versus privatised firms with majority foreign ownership.     

研发合作中的产权结构与投资激励

不完全合同背景下,产权分配在参与方的投资决策中至关重要。利用产权理论讨论了研发合作中的序贯投资决策和创新的产权分配问题。研究表明,最优产权结构随着参与方的谈判力变动,谈判力较低的一方单独拥有产权能够平衡其投资积极性;随着投资关系专用性程度的增加,最优产权为联合产权在产品开发者谈判力区间的范围更广。为了提高双方合作效率,可考虑采用由一个产品开发者出价并按照研究单位投资积极性分配初始产权的期权合同。比较分析发现：期权合同能够缓解投资不足问题,并进一步提高双方合作效率。     

我国上市公司股权激励对公司股价影响的实证研究

本文采集了29家上市公司在首次披露实施股权激励方案的前后各30个交易日股票收盘价,并运用Excel和Eviews5.0进行统计分析。研究发现,上市公司在披露实施股权激励方案后存在股价的超常波动,市场上存在超额收益。     

Multi-player bargaining with endogenous capacity

We study equilibrium prices and trade volume in a market with several identical buyers and a seller who commits to an inventory and then offers goods sequentially. Prices are determined by a strategic costly bargaining process with a random sequence of proponents. A unique subgame perfect equilibrium exists, characterized by no costly delays and heterogeneous sale prices. In equilibrium constraining capacity is a bargaining tactic the seller uses to improve a weak bargaining position. With capacity constraints, sale prices approach the outcome of an auction as bargaining costs vanish. The framework provides a building block for price formation in models of equilibrium search with multilateral matching, and offers a rationale for the adoption of single-unit auctions with fixed reservation price.     

Bargaining, search, and outside options

This paper studies a two-sided incomplete information bargaining model between a seller and a buyer. The buyer has an outside option, which is modeled as a sequential search process during which he can choose to return to bargaining at any time. Two cases are considered: In Regime I, both agents have symmetric information about the search parameters. We find that, in contrast to bargaining with complete information, the option to return to bargaining is not redundant in equilibrium. However, the no-delay result still holds. In Regime II, where agents have asymmetric information about the outside option, delay is possible. The solution characterizes the parameters for renegotiation and those for search with no return to the bargaining table.