Repeated Bargaining with Persistent Private Information: Structural Estimation of Screening Equilibria

9410711凯南本项目旨在对战略谈判模型的经验相关性进行评估。最终目标是对集体谈判中的重要政策问题进行理论上连贯的实证分析。私人信息的战略重要性在最近的许多理论模型中得到了强调，并在许多领域得到了应用。这一庞大的理论体系是否具有太多的经验性内容，还有待观察。劳动合同的分析是一个很好的试验台，因为已经提出了有趣的理论，并且有很好的数据可用。最近的文献有一个严重的局限性，那就是每一份合同都是孤立对待的。在实践中，劳资谈判涉及几年的合同，双方似乎意识到当前合同的结果将如何影响下一份合同的谈判。有强有力的证据表明，罢工的可能性受到上一份合同签署前发生的事情的影响：上次短暂罢工意味着现在罢工的可能性约为40%，而如果上次有长期罢工或没有罢工，目前的罢工概率低于20%。为了分析私人信息是否可以解释这种模式，将建立一个买方和卖方之间的谈判模型，其中在每个合同中分割的“饼”遵循马尔可夫链，买方私下观察到过渡。每一次谈判都由卖方提出的一系列报价组成；买方只能接受或拒绝每个报价，一旦买方接受，合同就会签署。

9410711 Kennan This project aims to provide an evaluation of the empirical relevance of strategic bargaining models. The ultimate goal is to develop theoretically coherent empirical analyses of important policy issues in collective bargaining. The strategic importance of private information has been emphasized in many recent theoretical models, with applications in many fields. It remains to be seen whether this large body of theory has much empirical substance. The analysis of labor contracts is a good test-bed, since interesting theories have been proposed, and good data are available. A serious limitation of the recent literature is that each contract is treated in isolation. In practice, labor negotiations involve contracts covering several years, and the parties seem mindful of how the outcome of the current contract will affect negotiations on the next contract. There is strong evidence that the likelihood of a strike is influenced by what happened before the previous contract was signed: a short strike last time means that the probability of a strike now is about 40%, while if there was either a long strike or no strike last time the current strike probability is below 20%. To analyze whether private information might explain this pattern, a model of negotiations between a buyer and a seller will be developed where the "pie" to be divided in each contract follows a Markov chain, with transitions that are observed privately by the buyer. Each negotiation consists of a sequence of offers made by the seller; the buyer can only accept or reject each offer, and a contract is signed as soon as the buyer accepts.