I consider two-person bargaining problems in which mechanism is selected at the almost ex ante stage---when there is some positive probability that players may have learned their private types---and the chosen mechanism is implemented at the interim stage. For these problems, I define almost ex...

Mediator proposals can accelerate agreement and increase welfare even if the mediator is entirely uninformed. We demonstrate this by adding random mediation to the Cramton (1992) bargaining model. Mediation increases welfare by pooling types, which reduces signaling costs. When mediation is...

Costly delay in negotiations can induce the negotiating parties to be more forthcoming with their information and improve the quality of the collective decision. Imposing a deadline may result in stalling, in which players at some point stop making concessions but switch back to conceding at the...

We present a version of Baliga and Sjöström’s (2012a) conflict games with two asymmetric players. The players contemplate whether to take an active engagement action to compel the leader of a neighboring state (an extremist) to give up his risky weapons. We show that a player with greater...

In this paper, we propose and analyze a distributed negotiation strategy for a multi-agent multi-attribute negotiation in which the agents have no information about the utility functions of other agents. We analytically prove that, if the zone of agreement is non-empty and the agents concede up...

This paper considers social contracts (or mechanisms) in negotiations with incomplete information in which an outside option is a probabilistic conflict and a peaceful agreement is ex ante efficient. Applications include partnership, labor-management bargaining, pretrial negotiations, and...

A challenger wants a resource initially held by a defender, who can negotiate a settlement by offering to share the resource. If challenger rejects, conflict ensues. During conflict each player could be a tough type for whom fighting is costless. Therefore non-concession intimidates the opponent...

Leveraging an established exercise in negotiation education, we build a novel dataset for studying how the use of language shapes bilateral bargaining. Our dataset extends existing work in two ways: 1) we recruit participants via behavioral labs instead of crowdsourcing platforms and allow...

We propose an elementary theory of wars fought by fully rational contenders that features three of the main rationalist explanations for armed conflicts: uncertainty, commitment, and indivisibility. Two parties play a Markov game that combines stages of bargaining, where offers are made, with...

We introduce a noncooperative multilateral bargaining model for a network-restricted environment, in which players can communicate only with their neighbors. Each player strategically chooses the bargaining partners among the neighbors to buy out their communication links with upfront transfers....