IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp01-025.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When to Haggle

Author

Listed:
  • Miller, Nolan

    (Harvard U)

  • Piankov, Nikita

    (Harvard U)

  • Zeckhauser, Richard

    (Harvard U)

Abstract

A seller faces a buyer with unknown reservation value. We show that buyer risk aversion can make it in the seller's interest to haggle. That is, the seller should make an initial offer and then, if it is rejected, make a second offer with some probability strictly less than one. This is true regardless of whether the seller haggles over price, quality, or price and quality simultaneously. The results are extended to contexts with multiple types of buyers and multiple dimensions for haggling.

Suggested Citation

  • Miller, Nolan & Piankov, Nikita & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2001. "When to Haggle," Working Paper Series rwp01-025, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp01-025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=15
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosen, Sherwin & Rosenfield, Andrew M, 1997. "Ticket Pricing," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(2), pages 351-376, October.
      • Rosen, Sherwin & Rosenfield, Andy, 1995. "Ticket Pricing," Working Papers 120, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    2. John G. Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1980. "Optimal Selling Strategies:," UCLA Economics Working Papers 180, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Matthews, Steven A., 1983. "Selling to risk averse buyers with unobservable tastes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 370-400, August.
    4. Spence, Michael, 1977. "Nonlinear prices and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 1-18, August.
    5. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    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. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2006. "To bundle or not to bundle," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 946-963, December.
    2. Dominique Henriet & Claude Henry & Patrick Rey & Jean-Charles Rochet, 1987. "Intérêt public, intérêt privé et discrimination," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 63(2), pages 98-117.
    3. Yongmin Chen & Ruqu Wang, 2004. "Equilibrium Selling Mechanisms," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 5(2), pages 335-355, November.

    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. Joyce Delnoij & Kris Jaegher, 2020. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(1), pages 183-216, February.
    2. Jaeyoung Sung, 2005. "Optimal Contracts Under Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard: A Continuous-Time Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 1021-1073.
    3. Yunan Li, 2017. "Efficient Mechanisms with Information Acquisition," PIER Working Paper Archive 16-007, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 23 Jun 2017.
    4. Goeree, Jacob K. & Kushnir, Alexey, 2016. "Reduced form implementation for environments with value interdependencies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 250-256.
    5. Natalia Kovrijnykh & Igor Livshits, 2017. "Screening As A Unified Theory Of Delinquency, Renegotiation, And Bankruptcy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 499-527, May.
    6. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Zou, Liang, 2011. "Premium auctions and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2420-2439.
    7. Maréchal, François & Morand, Pierre-Henri, 2011. "First-price sealed-bid auctions when bidders exhibit different attitudes toward risk," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 108-111.
    8. Matthews, Steven, 1987. "Comparing Auctions for Risk Averse Buyers: A Buyer's Point of View," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 633-646, May.
    9. Zhang, Mengxi, 2024. "Optimal contests with incomplete information and convex effort costs," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    10. Martimort, David & Arve, Malin, 2023. "Auctioning Long-Term Projects under Financial Constraints," TSE Working Papers 23-1469, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised May 2024.
    11. Giuseppe Lopomo, 2004. "Optimality and Robustness of the English Auction," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000391, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Cingottini, Ilaria & Menicucci, Domenico, 2006. "On the profitability of reducing competition in all-pay auctions with risk averse bidders," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 260-266, May.
    13. Baisa, Brian, 2016. "Overbidding and inefficiencies in multi-unit Vickrey auctions for normal goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 23-35.
    14. Motta, Massimo & Hansen, Stephen, 2012. "Vertical Exclusion with Endogenous Competiton Externalities," CEPR Discussion Papers 8982, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Michel Mougeot & Pierre Malgrange, 2002. "Présentation générale," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 156(5), pages 1-7.
    16. Ruqu Wang & Jun Zhang, 2010. "Common Value Auctions With Return Policies," Working Paper 1235, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    17. Menicucci, Domenico, 2003. "Selling to the highest valuation bidder under risk aversion and asymmetry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 247-253, May.
    18. Toomas Hinnosaar, 2015. "On the impossibility of protecting risk-takers," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 404, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    19. Li, Yunan, 2019. "Efficient mechanisms with information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 279-328.
    20. Baisa, Brian, 2017. "Auction design without quasilinear preferences," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.

    More about this item

    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:ecl:harjfk:rwp01-025. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    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.