Equilibrium opacity in ultimatum‐offer bargaining
Author | Kai A. Konrad,Marcel Thum |
Date | 01 September 2020 |
Published date | 01 September 2020 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12471 |
J Public Econ Theory. 2020;22:1515–1529. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jpet
|
1515
Received: 27 April 2020
|
Accepted: 10 August 2020
DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12471
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Equilibrium opacity in ultimatum‐offer
bargaining
Kai A. Konrad
1
|Marcel Thum
2
1
Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and
Public Finance, Marstallplatz 1, Munich,
Germany
2
Faculty of Business and Economics, TU
Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Correspondence
Kai A. Konrad, Max Planck Institute for
Tax Law and Public Finance, Marstallplatz
1, D‐80539 Munich, Germany.
Email: kai.konrad@tax.mpg.de
Abstract
We consider ultimatum bargaining between a seller
and a buyer of an asset. They know each other's va-
luation of the asset. Both can defer their decisions to
delegates. These delegates have opaque preferences.
Seller and buyer choose the opacity of their delegate.
For the seller's delegate this choice is restricted to a
random reservation price drawn from the set of
symmetric two‐point distributions around the seller's
true reservation price. The opacity choice of the
buyer's delegate is restricted to a random willingness‐
to‐pay drawn from the set of symmetric two‐point
distribution around the buyer's true willingness‐to‐
pay. We characterize the set of pure‐strategy equili-
bria in their delegation choices. Multiple equilibria
arise. Except for two corner solutions, both players
will exploit the strategy of opacity. A large set of ef-
ficient equilibria exist. For these, opacity choices do
not reduce the probability of transacting, but benefit
the buyer compared with the no‐delegation equili-
brium. We also study the robustness of the results
with respect to the player's ability to also resort to a
tougher delegate in addition to the opacity choice.
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© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Public Economic Theory published by Wiley Periodicals LLC
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