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，经济学家不认为目前可用的模型对这个问题提供了足够的处理。这个提议研究了一些讨价还价的情况下，球员有可能建立声誉的“坚韧”。我们希望表明，在片面的不对称信息的情况下，一个球员的耐心，非常温和的假设足以产生强有力的预测行为。转向关于估值的单侧不对称信息，目标是允许各种各样的行为扰动，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研究双边信息不对称：例如，任何一个参与者都不确定对方对要出售的物品的价值。文献几乎没有提供关于在这种情况下会发生什么的指导，这一建议将研究推向了几代研究人员认为无法渗透的领域。该提案的更广泛影响取决于将结果应用于现实世界讨价还价情况的可能性。经济和政治领域充斥着重要的例子，从工会和企业之间的集体谈判到一国与邻国之间关于木材、管道、关税或国防协议的谈判。理解这些基本原理将提高我们预测结果的能力，并设计政策和制度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.