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

两个代理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，她对某些商品的价值有多高，她可能有什么其他选择，等等）。尽管这个问题很重要，但传统的经济分析方法却无法解决这个问题，经济学家也不认为现有的模型能够充分地处理这个问题。这个建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。我们希望在玩家信息片面不对称的情况下？在耐心方面，非常适度的假设足以对行为做出强有力的预测。关于估值的片面不对称信息，我们的目标是考虑到多种多样的行为扰动，同时仍能得出强有力的结论。我们希望这项研究的结果将最终有助于研究双边不对称信息：例如，任何一方都不确定对方对要出售的物品的价值。在这种情况下，文献几乎没有提供任何指导，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。经济和政治领域充斥着重要的例子，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、关税或防务协议的谈判。了解基本的潜在原则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.