IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/5694.html

Repeated trade with imperfect information about previous transactions

Author

Listed:
  • Dilme, Francesc

    (Department of Economics, University of Bonn)

Abstract

This paper studies repeated bargaining with noisy information about previous transactions. A buyer has private information about his willingness to pay, which is either low or high, and buys goods from different sellers over time. Each seller observes a noisy history of signals about the buyer's previous purchases and sets a price. We compare the cases where previous prices are observable to sellers with the case where they are not. We show that more signal precision is counterbalanced by two equilibrium mechanisms that slow learning and keep incentives in balance: (1) sellers offer discounted prices more often, and (2) the buyer rejects high prices with a higher probability. The effect of making prices observable depends on the signal precision: When the signal is imprecise, making prices public strengthens the discounting mechanism, improving efficiency and buyer welfare; when the signal is precise, making prices public activates the rejection mechanism, and efficiency and buyer welfare may decrease. Independently of the price observability, the buyer tends to benefit from a more precise signal about previous purchases.

Suggested Citation

  • Dilme, Francesc, 2025. "Repeated trade with imperfect information about previous transactions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 20(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:5694
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20250209/41162/1269
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garrett A. Johnson & Scott K. Shriver & Shaoyin Du, 2020. "Consumer Privacy Choice in Online Advertising: Who Opts Out and at What Cost to Industry?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 33-51, January.
    2. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 2008. "Reputation And Equilibrium Selection In Games With A Patient Player," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 7, pages 123-142, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    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. Francesc Dilmé & Aaron Kolb, 2025. "Entry Deterrence with Public Signals: Revisiting the Chain-Store Paradox," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_704, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    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. Juan‐Pablo Montero & Juan Ignacio Guzman, 2010. "Output‐Expanding Collusion In The Presence Of A Competitive Fringe," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 106-126, March.
    2. Philippe Jehiel, 2022. "Analogy-Based Expectation Equilibrium and Related Concepts:Theory, Applications, and Beyond," Working Papers halshs-03735680, HAL.
    3. Kim, Jin-Hyuk & Newberry, Peter & Wagman, Liad, 2025. "Trading off convenience and privacy in social login," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    4. Harry Pei, 2020. "Reputation Building under Observational Learning," Papers 2006.08068, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2020.
    5. Jihong Lee & Qingmin Liu, 2008. "The Dynamics of Bargaining Postures: The Role of a Third Party," PIER Working Paper Archive 09-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    6. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    7. Teck Ming Tan & Saila Saraniemi, 2023. "Trust in blockchain-enabled exchanges: Future directions in blockchain marketing," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 914-939, July.
    8. Shota Fujishima, 2015. "The emergence of cooperation through leadership," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(1), pages 17-36, February.
    9. Bhaskar, V., 1994. "Informational Constraints and the Overlapping Generations Model : Folk and Anti-Folk Theorems," Other publications TiSEM 46a2a327-5203-4940-91e2-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Cripps, Martin, "undated". "Reputation Effects in Dynamic Games," Economic Research Papers 268363, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    11. Dragan Filipovich, 2002. "Free Riding And Incentives To Invest In The Reputation Of An Anonymous Group," Remef - Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas Nueva Época REMEF (The Mexican Journal of Economics and Finance), Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas, IMEF, vol. 1(1), pages 59-81, Marzo 200.
    12. Vicente Calabuig Alcantara, 1997. "Ineficiencias en las negociaciones entre dos agentes completamente informados," Working Papers. Serie EC 1997-03, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    13. Conlon, John R., 1995. "Continuous time vs. backward induction a new approach to modelling reputation in the finite time horizon context," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1449-1469, November.
    14. David K. Levine, 1998. "Modeling Altruism and Spitefulness in Experiment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(3), pages 593-622, July.
    15. Mengel, Friederike, 2014. "Learning by (limited) forward looking players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 59-77.
    16. V. Bhaskar & George J. Mailathy & Stephen Morris, 2009. "A Foundation for Markov Equilibria in Infinite Horizon Perfect Information Games," Levine's Working Paper Archive 814577000000000178, David K. Levine.
    17. Rahman, Rajib & Rojas, Christian, 2024. "The Effect of Singapore’s Sugar-Sweetened-Beverage Advertising Ban on Product Entry," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 344019, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Guillermo Ordonez, 2005. "Don't Ask Why Things Went Wrong: Nested Reputation and Scapegoating Inefficiency," Levine's Working Paper Archive 618897000000000988, David K. Levine.
    19. K. Schmidt, 1999. "Reputation and Equilibrium Characterization in Repeated Games of Conflicting Interests," Levine's Working Paper Archive 626, David K. Levine.
    20. Xiaowei Mei & Hsing Kenneth Cheng & Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay & Liangfei Qiu & Lai Wei, 2022. "Sponsored Data: Smarter Data Pricing with Incomplete Information," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 362-382, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:the:publsh:5694. 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: Editor Theoretical Economics The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Editor Theoretical Economics to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    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.