How Well Does Bargaining Work in Consumer Markets? A Robust Bounds Approach
利用eBay的讨价还价数据，通过不同行为和信息假设推导买卖双方私人价值分布和贸易收益的边界，发现中位数产品在37%的谈判中陷入僵局。
This study provides a structural analysis of detailed, alternating‐offer bargaining data from eBay, deriving bounds on buyers and sellers private value distributions and the gains from trade using a range of assumptions on behavior and the informational environment. These assumptions range from weak (assuming only that acceptance and rejection decisions are rational) to less weak (e.g., assuming that bargaining offers are weakly increasing in players' private values). We estimate the bounds and show what they imply for consumer negotiation behavior and inefficient breakdown. For the median product, bargaining ends in impasse in 37% of negotiations even when the buyer values the good more than the seller.