The Deadline Effect and Related Bargaining Phenomena: Some Experimental Studies

这个项目是一个快速增长的研究机构的一部分，这些研究机构利用实验室实验来检验和丰富经济理论。在这种情况下，经济理论是博弈理论的议价方法。在一系列早期的实验中，在一段固定的时间内，允许进行相对松散的讨价还价，结果发现，在截止日期前的最后几秒钟达成的协议惊人地集中。“最后期限效应”似乎相当强大，从某种意义上说，随着时间的推移，协议的分布对各种实验操作的敏感度似乎远低于协议条款的分布或不同意的频率。本项目中的实验旨在更好地理解截止日期的影响，并研究理论文献中各个部分提出的特定假设。实验研究将继续探讨所观察到的最后期限效应对议价机制变化和不同类型的最后期限的鲁棒性。例如，在早期实验中使用的尖锐截止日期被一个截止日期所取代，在这个截止日期之后，游戏突然结束的可能性就会上升。其中一个主要假设是，截止日期效应产生于一种筛选效应，类似于不完全信息模型的分离均衡。这个项目推导并实验测试了一个关于哪些因素可以被筛选的理论。在自然发生的谈判中，最后一刻达成协议既不罕见，也非常难以观察。但是标准的议价理论并不能预测或解释最后期限效应。该项目首次提供了对截止日期效应的科学研究，并扩展了议价理论，以捕捉导致截止日期效应发生的因素。

This project is part of a rapidly growing body of research that uses laboratory experiments to test and enrich economic theory. In this case the economic theory is the game theoretic approach to bargaining. In a series of earlier experiments in which relatively unstructured bargaining was allowed to proceed during a fixed time period, there was a striking concentration of agreements reached in the very last seconds before the deadline. The "deadline effect" appears to be quite robust, in the sense that the distribution of agreements over time appears to be much less sensitive to the various experimental manipulations than is the distribution of the terms of agreement or the frequency of disagreement. The experiments in this project are designed both to obtain a better understanding of the effect of deadlines, and to investigate particular hypotheses raised by various parts of the theoretical literature. The experimental research will continue to investigate the robustness of the observed deadline effect to changes in the mechanics of bargaining and to different kinds of deadlines. For example, the sharp deadline used in earlier experiments is replaced by a deadline after which there is a positive and rising probability that the game will end abruptly. One of the main hypotheses is that the deadline effect arises out of a screening effect similar to what is seen as separating equilibria of incomplete information models. This project derives and experimentally tests a theory about what factors might be screened for. Last-minute agreements are neither uncommon nor overwhelmingly difficult to observe in naturally occurring negotiations. But the deadline effect is not predicted or explained by standard bargaining theories. This project provides the first scientific study of deadline effects and it extends bargaining theory to capture the factors which cause deadline effects to occur.