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  1. Home
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  3. American Economic Review
  4. January 2023
  5. Unobserved-Offers Bargaining

Unobserved-Offers Bargaining

  • Alexander Wolitzky
American Economic Review
vol. 113, no. 1, January 2023
(pp. 136-73)
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Abstract

I study ultimatum bargaining with imperfectly observed offers. Imperfectly observed offers must be rejected with positive probability, even when the players' preferences are common knowledge. Noisier observations imply a greater risk of rejection. In repeated ultimatum bargaining, the responding party can obtain a positive payoff if his signal of the opponent's offer is also observed by the opponent herself, but not if his signal is private. In alternating-offers bargaining, a player is better off when her own offers are observed more precisely and her opponent's offers are observed less precisely. Possible applications include international relations, regulation, principal-agency, and product quality provision.

Citation

Wolitzky, Alexander. 2023. "Unobserved-Offers Bargaining." American Economic Review, 113 (1): 136-73. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20211524

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • C73 Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games
  • C78 Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
  • D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design