Collaborative Research: Reputational Equilibrium Refinements of Bargaining Games with Asymmetric Information

两个代理人之间的讨价还价是最核心的经济问题之一，它经常发生在信息不对称的情况下：一个或多个代理人缺乏关于对手的一些相关信息(她如何权衡当前和未来的消费，她对一些要交换的商品有多重视，她可能有什么其他选择，等等)。尽管这个问题很重要，但它抵制传统的经济分析，经济学家认为目前可用的模型没有为这个问题提供足够的治疗方法。这项提议研究了一些讨价还价的情况，当玩家有可能建立“强硬”的声誉时。我们希望证明，在关于玩家耐心的单方面不对称信息的情况下，非常适度的假设足以产生对行为的强有力的预测。转向关于估值的片面不对称信息，目标是考虑到丰富多样的行为扰动，同时仍然获得强有力的结论。我们希望，这项研究的结果最终将有助于对双边不对称信息的研究：例如，双方都不确定其他人对一件物品的价值有多高。这些文献几乎没有提供关于在这种情况下会发生什么的指导，而这一提议将研究推向了几代研究人员认为无法突破的领域。该提议的更广泛影响取决于其结果是否有可能应用于现实世界的讨价还价情况。经济和政治格局中充斥着重要的例子，从工会和公司之间的集体谈判，到一个国家与其邻国之间关于木材、管道、关税或国防协议的谈判。理解基本的基本原则将提高我们预测结果的能力，并设计政策和机构以促进更有利的结果。

Bargaining between two agents is one of the most central economic problems, and it often occurs under asymmetric information: one or more of the agents lack some relevant information about the opponent (how she weighs current versus future consumption, how much she values some commodity to be exchanged, what other options she might have, and so on). Despite the importance of this problem, it resists traditional economic analysis, and economists do not view the models currently available as offering adequate treatments of the subject. This proposal studies a number of bargaining situations when players have the possibility of building reputations for being "tough". We hope to show that in the case of one-sided asymmetric information about a player's patience, very modest assumptions suffice to produce strong predictions about behavior. Turning to one-sided asymmetric information about valuations, the goal is to allow for a rich variety of behavioral perturbations and still obtain strong conclusions. We hope that the results of this research will ultimately help in the study of two-sided asymmetric information: neither player is sure about how much the other values an object to be sold, for example. The literature offers virtually no guidance about what to expect in such situations and this proposal moves research toward areas considered impenetrable by generations of researchers. The broader impact of the proposal rests on the potential for the results to be applied to real-world bargaining situations. The economic and political landscapes are littered with important examples, from collective bargaining between union and firm to negotiations between a country and its neighbor regarding timber, pipelines, tariffs, or defense accords. Understanding the basic underlying principles would improve our ability to predict outcomes, and to design policies and institutions to promote more favorable results.