IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v34y2010i2p101-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal stalling when bargaining

Author

Listed:
  • Thanassoulis, John

Abstract

This paper analyzes an alternating offer model of bargaining over the sale of an asset in a market, such as that for housing, in which another agent may come and compete for the right to strike a deal. The analysis allows the buyer and seller to have possibly differing views as to how likely such a competition is. Hence the buyer and the seller disagree about their respective bargaining powers. These views adjust to market realizations as the parties learn. It is shown that there exists a unique subgame perfect equilibrium which can be explicitly constructed: hence, conditional on market conditions, equilibrium prices and optimal stall lengths (that is, delay) can be found. Bargaining delay can only occur if there is optimism (not pessimism) and only if the parties are open to learning as time elapses. This delay can occur even for very small levels of optimism and the delay can be for economically significant periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Thanassoulis, John, 2010. "Optimal stalling when bargaining," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 101-120, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:34:y:2010:i:2:p:101-120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1889(09)00114-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    2. Dilip Abreu & Faruk Gul, 2000. "Bargaining and Reputation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(1), pages 85-118, January.
    3. Yasutora Watanabe, 2005. "Learning and Bargaining in Dispute Resolution: Theory and Evidence from Medical Malpractice Litigation," 2005 Meeting Papers 440, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Morris, Stephen, 1995. "The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 227-253, October.
    5. Avery Christopher & Zemsky Peter B., 1994. "Option Values and Bargaining Delays," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 139-153, September.
    6. Muhamet Yildiz, 2003. "Bargaining without a Common Prior-An Immediate Agreement Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(3), pages 793-811, May.
    7. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    8. Fernandez, Raquel & Glazer, Jacob, 1991. "Striking for a Bargain between Two Completely Informed Agents," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 240-252, March.
    9. Kennan, John & Wilson, Robert, 1993. "Bargaining with Private Information," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 45-104, March.
    10. Ali, S. Nageeb M., 2006. "Waiting to settle: Multilateral bargaining with subjective biases," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 109-137, September.
    11. William M. Landes, 1974. "An Economic Analysis of the Courts," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 164-214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Faruk Gul, 1998. "A Comment on Aumann's Bayesian View," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 923-928, July.
    13. Crawford, Vincent P, 1982. "A Theory of Disagreement in Bargaining," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 607-637, May.
    14. Cripps, Martin W., 1998. "Markov bargaining games," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 341-355, March.
    15. Muhamet Yildiz, 2004. "Waiting to Persuade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 223-248.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alp Simsek & Muhamet Yildiz, 2016. "Durability, Deadline, and Election Effects in Bargaining," NBER Working Papers 22284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dipjyoti Majumdar & Artyom Shneyerov & Huan Xie, 2016. "An optimistic search equilibrium," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 20(2), pages 89-114, June.
    3. Caroline Freund & Mary Hallward-Driemeier & Bob Rijkers, 2016. "Deals and Delays: Firm-level Evidence on Corruption and Policy Implementation Times," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 354-382.
    4. Merlo, Antonio & Tang, Xun, 2015. "Bargaining with Optimism: A Structural Analysis of Medical Malpractice Litigation," Working Papers 15-005, Rice University, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ortner, Juan, 2013. "Optimism, delay and (in)efficiency in a stochastic model of bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 352-366.
    2. Alberto Galasso, 2007. "Broad Cross-License Agreements andPersuasive Patent Litigation: Theory andEvidence from the Semiconductor Industry," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 45, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    3. Ellingsen, Tore & Miettinen, Topi, 2014. "Tough negotiations: Bilateral bargaining with durable commitments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 353-366.
    4. Galasso, Alberto, 2007. "Broad cross-license agreements and persuasive patent litigation: theory and evidence from the semiconductor industry," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6718, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Li Duozhe & Wong Yat Fung, 2009. "Optimism and Bargaining Inefficiency," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, April.
    6. Lee, Yoon-Ho Alex & Klerman, Daniel, 2016. "The Priest-Klein hypotheses: Proofs and generality," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 59-76.
    7. Karagözoğlu, Emin & Keskin, Kerim, 2018. "Time-varying fairness concerns, delay, and disagreement in bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 115-128.
    8. Acharya, Avidit & Ortner, Juan, 2013. "Delays and partial agreements in multi-issue bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 2150-2163.
    9. Alp Simsek & Muhamet Yildiz, 2016. "Durability, Deadline, and Election Effects in Bargaining," NBER Working Papers 22284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Galasso, Alberto, 2010. "Over-confidence may reduce negotiation delay," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 716-733, December.
    11. Eso, Peter & Wallace, Chris, 2016. "Persuasion and Pricing : Dynamic Trading with Hard Evidence," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 24, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    12. James Andreoni & Ray D Madoff, 2007. "Overconfdence and Judicial Discretion: Do Winner-take-all Rules Discourage Pre-trial Agreement?," Levine's Bibliography 843644000000000198, UCLA Department of Economics.
    13. Miettinen, Topi & Vanberg, Christoph, 2020. "Commitment and Conflict in Multilateral Bargaining," Working Papers 0679, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    14. Christopher Tyson, 2010. "Dominance solvability of dynamic bargaining games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(3), pages 457-477, June.
    15. Claudia M. Landeo, 2018. "Law and economics and tort litigation institutions: theory and experiments," Chapters, in: Joshua C. Teitelbaum & Kathryn Zeiler (ed.), Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, chapter 9, pages 247-268, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2015. "Time Preferences and Bargaining," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series /2015/568, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    17. Ali, S. Nageeb M., 2006. "Waiting to settle: Multilateral bargaining with subjective biases," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 109-137, September.
    18. Juan Ortner, 2014. "Political Bargaining in a Changing World," 2014 Meeting Papers 445, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. J.J. Prescott & Kathryn E. Spier & Albert Yoon, 2014. "Trial and Settlement: A Study of High-Low Agreements," NBER Working Papers 19873, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Ortner, Juan, 2017. "A theory of political gridlock," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:34:y:2010:i:2:p:101-120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.