Bargaining and News

American Economic Review, 2020

Working Paper No. 00022-00

learning bargaining private information dynamics

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We study a bargaining model in which a buyer makes frequent offers to a privately informed seller, while gradually learning about the seller’s type from “news.” We show that the buyer’s ability to leverage this information to extract more surplus from the seller is remarkably limited. In fact, the buyer gains nothing from the ability to negotiate a better price despite the fact that a negotiation must take place in equilibrium. During the negotiation, the buyer engages in a form of costly “experimentation” by making offers that are sure to earn her negative payoffs if accepted, but speed up learn- ing and improve her continuation payoff if rejected. We investigate the effects of market power by comparing our results to a setting with competitive buyers. Both efficiency and the seller’s payoff can decrease by introducing competition among buyers.

Brendan Daley

Brendan Daley

Johns Hopkins University

Brett Green

Brett Green

Washington University in St.Louis