Collaborative Research: Network Formation and Bargaining with Exclusionary Commitments

许多经济活动都涉及到双边市场，即市场一侧的企业与另一侧的企业形成网络。在许多这样的市场中，双方都有少量的公司，合同是双边谈判的。均衡网络结构和贸易条件是相互交织的，是通过市场双方买卖双方的战略互动而产生的。例子包括医院与健康保险提供商谈判费率的健康保险市场，电视台和其他内容提供商与有线电视公司和流媒体平台谈判价格的数字媒体市场，以及下游公司与上游供应商签订合同的制造网络。这个项目的总体目标是研究多个买家和多个卖家之间讨价还价的模型，其中每个代理都可能与市场对面的几个其他代理签订合同。一个更狭窄的目标，也是我们将首先研究的目标，是理解排他性预承诺的作用。例如，面对多个买家的卖家可能会发现，通过承诺只与特定买家子集进行交易来制造人为的稀缺性是有利可图的。这项研究将为排除承诺以及它们如何影响网络结构和形成的每个环节的贸易条件提供新的视角。为分析“薄”市场中的排除承诺和网络形成提供一个系统框架，将扩大卫生经济学和其他双边市场的应用研究人员以及政策制定者和监管机构可用的工具包。该项目将制定与灵活网络形成兼容的排除承诺的一般定义，并将提供无外部性设置的最优排除承诺的有力特征。该研究将揭示，与威胁排除特定买家相比，与固定数量的买家进行灵活的交易，使卖家能够获得更高的利润。在均衡状态下，一些买家被确定地包括在内，并与卖家平分边际剩余。估值较低的买家被排除的概率为正；与这些买家讨价还价是由一种新的顺序外部期权原则驱动的。这些结论将扩展到具有外部性的环境，在这种环境中，市场同一侧的代理人被划分为不同的类别，并且在类别内和类别之间的估值是相互依赖的。在早期的理论工作和应用中，严重依赖于“纳什中纳什”议价解决方案和密切相关的概念。初步分析表明，这种依赖可能是过度的，并且纳什中的纳什框架可能导致与合理和熟悉的讨价还价协议产生的预测不同的结论。开发基于自然协议的多个买家和卖家之间讨价还价的新模型，将有助于一个仍然缺乏既定理论的领域。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A lot of economic activity involves two-sided markets in which firms on one side of the market form networks with firms on the other side. In many of these markets there are small numbers of firms on each side, and contracts are negotiated bilaterally. The equilibrium network structure and terms of trade are intertwined and emerge through the strategic interactions of buyers and sellers on both sides of the market. Examples include the market for health insurance in which hospitals negotiate rates with health insurance providers, the market for digital media in which TV stations and other content providers negotiate prices with cable companies and streaming platforms, and manufacturing networks in which downstream firms sign contracts with upstream suppliers. The broad goal of this project is to investigate models of bargaining between multiple buyers and multiple sellers in which each agent may potentially contract with several others on the opposite side of the market. A narrower goal, and the one we will first investigate, is to understand the role of exclusionary pre-commitments. For instance, a seller facing multiple buyers may find it profitable to create artificial scarcity by committing to trade only with specific subsets of buyers. The research will offer new perspectives on exclusion commitments and how they shape network structure and terms of trade for each link that forms. Providing a systematic framework for analyzing exclusion commitments and network formation in “thin” markets will expand the toolkit available to applied researchers in health economics and other two-sided markets as well as to policymakers and regulators. The project will develop a general definition of exclusion commitments compatible with flexible network formation, and will provide powerful characterizations of optimal exclusion commitments for settings without externalities. The research will reveal that flexibly trading with a fixed number of buyers enables sellers to extract higher profits than threatening to exclude particular buyers. In equilibrium, some buyers are included with certainty and split the marginal surplus equally with the seller. Buyers with lower valuations are excluded with positive probability; bargaining with these buyers is driven by a novel sequential outside option principle. The conclusions will be extended to settings with externalities in which agents on the same side of the market are divided into different categories, and valuations are interdependent within and across categories. In earlier theoretical work and applications, there has been heavy reliance on the “Nash-in-Nash” bargaining solution and closely related concepts. Preliminary analysis suggests that this reliance might be excessive, and that the Nash-in-Nash framework could lead to conclusions at variance with the predictions generated by plausible and familiar bargaining protocols. Developing new models of bargaining between multiple buyers and sellers based on natural protocols will contribute to an area that still lacks a settled theory.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.