We consider the consequences of competition between two types of experimental exchange mechanisms, a “decentralized bargaining” market, and a “centralized” market. It is shown that decentralized bargaining is subject to a process of “unraveling” in which relatively high value traders...

Much of the economic value of electronic commerce comes from the automation of interactions between businesses and individuals. Game theory is a useful set of tools that can be used by designers of electronic-commerce applications in analyzing and engineering of automated agents and...

Despite the recent misfortunes of many dotcoms, e-commerce will have major and lasting effects on economic activity. But the rise and fall in the valuations of the first wave of e-commerce companies show that vague promises of distant profits are insufficient. Only business models based on sound...

The paper considers the consequences of competition between two widely used exchange mechanisms, a "decentralized bargaining" market, and a "centralized" market. In every period, members of a large heterogenous group of privately-informed traders who each wish to buy or sell one unit of some...

For any organisation, saving on procurement costs has an impact on profitability that is multiplied by gross margin. Although much research focus has been placed on achieving the lowest possible cost for the goods/services purchased we concern ourselves here with the operational procurement...

This paper analyzes automated distributive negotiation where agents have firm deadlines that are private information. The agents are allowed to make and accept offers in any order in continuous time. We show that the only sequential equilibrium outcome is one where the agents wait until the...

We describe an experiment where buyers and sellers, endowed with heterogeneous deadlines, are randomly matched and attempt to reach agreement over the division of a fixed surplus. The theoretical models that provide the background for this experiment have been developed in recent papers by...