The Sealed-Bid Mechanism & Bargaining Under Incomplete Information

激发这项研究的问题是如何正确地 不完全信息下的结构谈判 这样的 问题自然出现在所谓的 "转移价格问题"，即，的设计问题 商品和服务的定价机制， 从公司的一个部门调到另一个部门。 典型的 这种情况的特征在于，相关数据，例如，的 供应商部门的成本和客户的利益 师，不为与会者所熟知。 比如说， 供应商的成本更好地了解， 供应商比客户，并为客户的利益 比供应商更了解客户。 该研究项目继续并扩展了已开展的工作 此前，两名调查员就密封投标机制进行了调查， 讨价还价 密封投标程序是一种广泛使用的方法 在不完全信息下进行谈判，因为 它有一个简单的线性均衡， 特性. 不幸的是，还有无数的其他 福利性质从次优到最优 最佳为零。 作为一个实际问题，这一机制不是 很有吸引力，因为没有保证，"好" 平衡将被挑选出来的无穷的其他 存在的均衡。 研究人员进行了第一个受控实验室 密封投标机制的实验。 他们证明了 买方和卖方在密封投标机制下进行谈判， average选择了简单的线性投标策略， “好”的均衡。 该项目追求一些重要的 这些实验提出的未解决的问题。 比如说， 究竟是什么导致了阶跃函数 随着实验范围的扩大，投标行为会发生什么变化？ 如何 我们能否解释买家的不对称行为， 在这些实验中，？ 为什么非结构化的面对面 讨价还价比其他任何形式的讨价还价都要好。 "廉价的谈话"，即，没有任何约束力的谈话 影响最终的谈判，影响谈判的结果， 流程？ 该项目在方法上和实质上都具有重要意义。 对我们理解讨价还价行为的贡献。 从方法论上讲，它表明是否普遍使用 实验性做法，如确定买方和卖方， 少量重复实验会使结果产生偏差 讨价还价的实验。 实质上，它严格地推导出 并通过实验测试了 不完全信息下投标行为的"规律"。

The problem motivating this research is one of how to properly structure bargaining under incomplete information. Such a problem arises naturally in the context of the so-called "transfer price problem," i.e., the problem of designing mechanisms for the pricing of goods and services that are transferred from one division of a firm to another. A typical feature of this situation is that the relevant data, e.g., the costs of the supplier division and the benefits of the customer division, are not well known to the participants. For example, it would be normal for the supplier's costs to be better known to the supplier than the customer, and for the customer's benefits to be better known to the customer than the supplier. This research project continues and extends work undertaken previously by the two investigators on sealed-bid mechanisms for bargaining. The sealed-bid procedure is one widely used method for structuring bargaining under incomplete information because it has a simple linear equilibrium with desirable welfare properties. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of other equilibria with welfare properties that range from second-best optimal to zero. As a practical matter, this mechanism is not very appealing, since there is no guarantee that the "good" equilibrium will be picked out of the infinity of other equilibria that exist. The investigators conducted the first controlled laboratory experiments on the sealed-bid mechanism. They demonstrated that buyers and sellers bargaining under a sealed-bid mechanism on average chose the simple, linear bidding strategies that resulted in "good" equilibria. This project pursues a number of important unresolved questions raised by these experiments. For instance, what exactly account for the emergence of step-function-like bidding behavior as the horizon of the experiment increases? How can we account for the asymmetrical behavior of the buyers and sellers in these experiments? Why did unstructured face-to-face bargaining perform better than all other forms of bargaining? Does "cheap talk," i.e., talk that does not have any binding impact on the eventual negotiations, influence the outcome of the process? The project makes significant methodological and substantive contributions to our understanding of bargaining behavior. Methodologically, it demonstrates whether commonly used experimental practices such as identifying buyers and sellers or repeating the experiment a small number of times bias the results of bargaining experiments. Substantively, it derives rigorously and tests experimentally for the presence of regularities or "laws" in bidding behavior under incomplete information.