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...

The automated negotiation process seems to be a powerful mechanism to resolve disputes arising from Internet-based transactions. Automated negotiation is an online blind-bidding process in which an automated algorithm evaluates bids from the parties and settles the case if the offers are within...

A key to the Coase conjecture is the monopolist's inability to commit to a price, which leads consumers to believe that a high current price will be followed by low future prices. This paper studies the robustness of the Coase conjecture with respect to these beliefs of consumers. In particular,...

The sealed-bid k-double auction mechanism for two-person bargaining under incomplete information can be extended by providing a bonus for both traders if, and only if, an agreement is reached. Brams and Kilgour (1996) proved that there is a unique level of bonus, namely, half the difference...

I derive a refinement of sequential equilibria of a noncooperative bargaining game when one player has incomplete information about the time preference of the other player. I show that if the types for this latter player are drawn from some totally ordered and finite lattice, Grossman &...

In a two-sided search market agents are paired to bargain over a unit surplus. The matching market serves as an endogenous outside option for a bargaining agent. Behavioral agents are commitment types that demand a constant portion of the surplus. The frequency of behavioral types is determined...

This paper studies a two-sided incomplete information bargaining model between a seller and a buyer. The buyer has an outside option, which is modeled as a sequential search process during which he can also choose to return to bargaining at any time. Two cases considered: In Regime I, both...

This experimental study investigates two bargaining games with twosided incomplete information between a seller and a buyer. In the first game with no outside options many subjects do not use the incomplete information to their advantage as predicted. We find that a model with adjusting priors...