Information and delay in an agency model
研究了谈判中延迟的原因，发现当交易量可变时，延迟不再作为甄别工具，且信息质量对延迟的影响非单调，甚至可能降低社会福利。
Negotiations often take long time even if a delay in the agreement is inefficient.\nOne typical explanation is the existence of private information of at least one party;\nthe time is then a discriminating instrument. The paper starts by pointing out that\nthis result does not hold once the traded quantity is not fixed as in most bargaining\nmodels; the quantity outperforms the time as a discriminating instrument, that\nis, there is no delay. Moreover, Coase conjecture does not hold either. We then\nstudy how a signal arriving in the course of negotiations affects the delay in the\nagreement. Unlike investment-under-uncertainty models, a better signal not only\nimproves contracting in the future but also in the present. Therefore, the delay is in\ngeneral not monotonic in the quality of information. The value of information can\nbe negative over some range as better information may aggravate the principal’s\ncommitment problem.