Collusion and Information Exchange

Antitrust authorities view that exchange of individual firms’ sales data is more anti‐competitive than that of aggregate sales data. In this paper, I survey antitrust implications of such inter‐firm information exchange. I argue that both types of information exchange are anti‐competitive under some circumstances. More precisely, I compare profits when each type of information exchange is allowed to that when firms can only observe their own sales (Stigler’s secret price‐cutting model), and the former is bigger than the latter. I also provide a general method to bound the equilibrium profits without such information exchange.     

INFANT INDUSTRY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRADE PROTECTION

Abstract.  This paper introduces infant-industry considerations in political economy determination of trade protection. I build a model where the government cares about both political contributions and national welfare. A potentially beneficial high-tech industry is not viable in the country whose initial human capital is low. In the political economy equilibrium, we find that the tariff schedule will be V-shaped: it decreases initially to maintain the viability of the industry but increases thereafter as the industry expands and gains political power. We use the model to explain both China's tariff offers in WTO negotiations and GATT/WTO rules regarding developing countries.     

INTIMIDATION: LINKING NEGOTIATION AND CONFLICT

A challenger wants a resource initially held by a defender, who can negotiate a settlement by offering to share the resource. If Challenger rejects, conflict ensues. During conflict, each player could be a tough type for whom fighting is costless. Therefore, nonconcession intimidates the opponent into conceding. Unlike in models where negotiations happen in the shadow of exogenously specified conflicts, offers made during negotiations determine how conflict unfolds if negotiations fail. In turn, how conflict is expected to unfold determines the players' negotiating positions. In equilibrium, negotiations always fail with positive probability, even if players face a high cost of conflict. Allowing multiple offers leads to brinkmanship—the only acceptable offer is the one made when conflict is imminent. If negotiations fail, conflict is prolonged and not duration dependent.     

Trade and Environment: Bargaining Outcomes from Linked Negotiations

Some recent literature has explored physical and policy linkages between trade and the environment. This paper explores linkage through leverage in bargaining, whereby developed countries can use trade threats to achieve improved developing-country environmental management, while developing countries can use environmental concessions to achieve trade discipline in developed countries. A global numerical simulation model is used to compute bargaining outcomes from linked trade and environment negotiations. Results indicate joint gains from expanding the trade bargaining set to include the environment. However, compared with bargaining with cash side-payments, linked negotiations on policy instruments provide significantly inferior outcomes for developing countries.     

Prosecutorial Resources, Plea Bargaining, and the Decision to Go to Trial

This article examines the strategic interaction between a defendantand a prosecutor during the plea bargaining process. A four-stagegame of incomplete information is developed where the defendant'sguilt or innocence is private information but the amount ofresources available to the prosecutor is common knowledge. Thebasic result of the article is that equilibrium is semiseparating;the plea offer is accepted by a proportion of the guilty defendantsand is rejected by all of the innocent defendants and the remainingguilty defendants. In this model an increase in the resourcesavailable to the prosecutor increases the proportion of guiltydefendants who accept plea offers. Although the prosecutor isunable to generate complete separation of the guilty and innocentdefendants through the plea bargaining process, prosecutorialresources are beneficial from a societal standpoint.     

中美贸易协商:不确定性与最优选择

本文试图为中美贸易协商提供一个理论框架,并从更一般化的意义上对削减关税之谜(tariff reduction paradox)给出了一个新的理论解释:从一个高关税的初始环境出发,在一定条件下政府之间会相互协商以降低关税,但不会完全取消关税。这是由于在某些情况下,关税可以减少多重瓦尔拉斯均衡带来的不确定性。进一步而言,通过外商直接投资发生的"禀赋互换(endowment swaps)"可成为优于关税和贸易管制的一种替代选择。     

Verifiability and Contract Enforcement: A Model with Judicial Moral Hazard

I model the litigation of a contract containing a variable notobservable by courts, hence nonverifiable, unless the rationaland self-interested judge exerts effort. He values the correctruling but dislikes effort. Judicial effort is discretionary.I show that effort cost is inconsequential—"always breach"is equilibrium for any effort cost. But there exists anotherequilibrium where a small breach rate is achieved even withsignificant effort costs. Maximal remedies for breach are notoptimal. Because effort is discretionary, low effort cost increasesbreach. Pretrial negotiations can have a substantial negativeimpact on verifiability under arbitrarily small deviations fromfull rationality.     

Tough negotiations: Bilateral bargaining with durable commitments

We offer a tractable model of tough negotiations and delayed agreement. The setting is an infinite horizon bilateral bargaining game in which negotiators can make strategic commitments to durable offers. Commitments decay stochastically, but uncommitted negotiators can make new commitments. The game's unique Markov Perfect equilibrium outcome takes the form of a war of attrition: Negotiators initially commit to incompatible offers, but agreement occurs once a negotiator's commitment decays. If commitments decay more quickly, the terms of the agreement become more equal. In expectation, more patient, committed, and less risk averse negotiators obtain a larger fraction of the surplus.     

Strategic step-by-step negotiation

We analyze a specific type of negotiation process where parties proceed in stages taking into consideration that negotiation may end prematurely with an inefficient agreement. Parties negotiate only one increasing pie, thereby avoiding inefficiencies which are typical for issue-by-issue negotiations. For ann-stage game, we prove the existence of a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium. We then show that step-by-step negotiation can only improve players' expected payoffs if negotiation in stages reduces the difference between their equilibrium offers. For this to occur, however, the risk of negotiation must be affected by the agenda of the bargaining problem.     

International outsourcing when labour markets are unionized

Abstract. We consider the implications of international outsourcing in a simple general equilibrium model where the wage rate is the outcome of negotiations between a firm and a trade union. The effects of potential, but non‐realized, international outsourcing, is a reduction in the wage rate and an increase in employment. Aggregate welfare increases, but the trade union becomes worse off while owners of capital become better off. Realized international outsourcing gives rise to an increase in the wage rate and a reduction in employment. Aggregate welfare decreases, but the trade union becomes better off, while owners of capital become worse off.     

Alternating-offer games with final-offer arbitration

I analyze an alternating-offer model that integrates the common practice of having an arbitrator determine the outcomes if both playersʼ offers are rejected. I assume that the arbitrator uses final-offer arbitration (as in professional baseball). I find that if the arbitrator does not excessively favor one player, then the unique subgame-perfect equilibrium always coincides with the subgame-perfect equilibrium outcome in Rubinsteinʼs infinite-horizon alternating-offer game. However, if the arbitrator sufficiently favors the player making the initial offer, then delay occurs in equilibrium.     

Increasing Dominance with No Efficiency Effect

I uncover a new force towards increasing dominance (the property whereby, in dynamic games, the leader tends to increase his or her lead in expected terms). The new effect results from the strategic choice of covariance in races. I assume that players must choose not the amount of resources to spend but how to allocate those resources. I show that, in equilibrium, the laggard chooses a less promising path, in effect trading off lower expected value for lower correlation with respect to the leader. This results in increasing dominance and holds true even if no joint-payoff (or efficiency) effect is present. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C7, L1.     

Communication and Early Contributions

In the context of the voluntary provision of a public good, I study the interaction of communication and dynamics in contributions. I modify the cheap talk, joint‐project framework of Agastya, Menezes, and Sengupta (2007) by considering early contributions that precede communication and by assuming partially funded projects are not completely worthless. First, I show environments in which, without early contributions, parties cannot be trusted to communicate sincerely, so that the joint endeavor always fails. Then, for the same environments, I demonstrate that early contributions can create the conditions for mutual trust, improve the outcome of subsequent communication, and eventually increase welfare. This trust‐building role of early contributions matches well with the aims that negotiation scholars attribute to preconditions for negotiations and to preliminary concessions.     

CORPORATE BANKRUPTCY REORGANIZATIONS: ESTIMATES FROM A BARGAINING MODEL*

This article uses a novel approach to measure the unobserved liquidation value of a firm that relies on the information contained in the allocations that are agreed upon in Chapter 11 negotiations. I estimate a game theoretic model that captures the influence of liquidation value on the equilibrium allocations using a newly collected data set. I find that the liquidation values are higher when the industry conditions are more favorable, and the real interest rates are higher. I use the estimated model to conduct a counterfactual experiment to quantitatively assess the impact of a mandatory liquidation on the equilibrium allocations.     

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.     

A Noncooperative Quantity‐Rationing Theory of Transboundary Pollution

We study a remedy for the problem caused by international transfrontier pollution. Our results are derived from the analysis of a noncooperative game model of the determination of emissions in a quantity‐rationing setting. We model the emission capping negotiations using the best response dynamic process and provide natural conditions under which the process has a unique and globally asymptotically stable stationary point. We then analyze the link between type profiles and the stationary points of the negotiation process to derive various comparative statics results and the type‐contingent ordering of emission allocations. These results are used to study the investment strategies that nations can use prior to the negotiations in order to manipulate the equilibrium emission caps.     

Regulation and Coordination of International Environmental Externalities with Incomplete Information and Costly Public Funds

In this article, we study cross-border externalities in a game played by two principal-agent pairs with adverse selection. Each firm/agent is located in one country and generates pollution by producing complementary or substitute goods, sold on a common market. A fraction of pollution is transferred from one country to another. Each regulator/principal is imperfectly informed about the marginal cost of his domestic firm and accordingly uses secret incentive contracts with costly public funds. We show the necessity of cooperation between competing regulators to effectively internalize all the damages caused to the environment, while reaching the first best. If the level of uncertainty is sufficiently low, we obtain an infinity of noncooperative Bayesian differentiable equilibria, which may necessitate competing regulators to coordinate on an equilibrium. Such coordination constitutes an incentive for competing regulators to cooperate. Our major result states that under some circumstances asymmetric information relaxes the transborder externality problem. Indeed, we show that, when there is a major transfer of pollution and firms' marginal costs are sufficiently high, competing regulators are better off under uncertainty. Therefore, asymmetry of information can have the very consequence of generating regulation that is too strict from the domestic viewpoint but that improves social efficiency when the benefits to both countries are taken into account.     

SEQUENTIAL TWO‐PLAYER GAMES WITH AMBIGUITY*

If players' beliefs are strictly nonadditive, the Dempster–Shafer updating rule can be used to define beliefs off the equilibrium path. We define an equilibrium concept in sequential two‐person games where players update their beliefs with the Dempster–Shafer updating rule. We show that in the limit as uncertainty tends to zero, our equilibrium approximates Bayesian Nash equilibrium. We argue that our equilibrium can be used to define a refinement of Bayesian Nash equilibrium by imposing context‐dependent constraints on beliefs under uncertainty.     

Bargaining and Search with Incomplete Information about Outside Options

This paper considers a model of bargaining in which the seller makes offers and the buyer can search (at a cost) for an outside option; the outside option cannot be credibly communicated, and the seller's offer is recallable by the buyer for one period. There are essentially two equilibrium regimes. For sufficiently high search cost, the game ends immediately; otherwise the search occurs in equilibrium. Compared to the case where the buyer can communicate his outside option, the seller is worse off, and the game results in search for a smaller set of values of the search cost, i.e., less equilibrium delay.C72.     

IMMEDIATE SETTLEMENT OR ENDURING A STRIKE: THE CHOICE OF SIGNALS

Some labour contract negotiations involve strikes while most conclude with immediate settlement. This article offers a model of union‐firm negotiation with private information to show that either strikes or immediate settlement will take place in the equilibrium. Different from most signalling literature where the signals are exogenously given, this article endogenizes the choice of signals. We compare two signals, the employment level and the strategic delay. We show that the low‐revenue firm will choose the signal which gives it higher payoff while separating itself from the high‐revenue firm.