Uncertainty and Delay in Bargaining

这个项目之所以重要，是因为它对博弈论的方法论贡献，以及对我们理解产业组织、工资谈判和不完全信息讨价还价的实质性贡献。虽然他的职业生涯才刚刚开始，但这位研究员已经在博弈论的经济应用方面做出了重大贡献。方法论上的贡献来自于将战略稳定的概念扩展到目前的经济应用范围之外。这一点很重要，因为经济主体的战略行为内在有多种结果，战略稳定的概念允许研究人员严格识别特定的合理结果，并通过这种方式做出可检验的预测。该项目开发了用于确定战略稳定性的易于计算的算法。实质上，该项目考察了进入威慑，即一个行业内的公司通过发出与任何未来进入者的激烈竞争的信号来阻止潜在竞争对手。调查人员获得的初步结果表明，目前的进入威慑模式的解决方案在很大程度上取决于一个小假设，因此在战略上并不稳定。研究人员还证明了存在唯一稳定的进入威慑解。这个项目的贡献来自于推广这些结果和确定稳定解的具体特征。该项目还研究了罢工在工资谈判中的使用。最近的研究表明，管理层和工会这两个理性的参与者之间的工资谈判可能会涉及罢工，尽管罢工对双方来说都是代价高昂的。这个项目的贡献来自于解释了为什么工资谈判经常涉及管理层要么接受要么放弃的提议，这往往会导致公司代价高昂的关闭。

This project is important because of its methodological contribution to game theory and its substantive contributions to our understanding of industrial organization, wage negotiations and bargaining with imperfect information. Although he is just beginning his career, the investigator has already made significant contributions to economic applications of game theory. The methodological contribution comes from extending the concept of strategic stability beyond the current range of economic applications. This is important because there are multiple outcomes intrinsic in the strategic behavior of economic agents and the concept of strategic stability permits researchers to rigorously identify specific sensible outcomes and in this way make testable predictions. The project develops computationally tractable algorithms for determining strategic stability. Substantively, the project examines entry deterrence, i. e., firms within an industry deter potential competitors by signalling tough competition against any future entrants. Preliminary results obtained by the investigator suggest the solutions of current models of entry deterrence depend crucially on a minor assumption and, therefore, are not strategically stable. The investigator also proved that a unique stable solution exists for entry deterrence. The contribution of this project comes from generalizing these results and determining the specific characteristics of the stable solution. The project also studies the use of strikes in wage negotiations. Recent work demonstrated that wage negotiations between two rational players, management and union, may involve strikes, even though a strike is costly for both parties. The contribution of this project comes from explaining why wage negotiations often involve a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the management, which frequently leads to a costly shutdown of the firm.