The Sealed-Bid Mechanism & Bargaining Under Incomplete      Information
{'Code': '04050100', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'SBE', 'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'SES', 'LongName': 'Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Daniel H. Newlon', 'PO_EMAI': None, 'PO_PHON': None}
The problem motivating this research is one of how to properly                  structure bargaining under incomplete information.  Such a                      problem arises naturally in the context of the so-called                        "transfer price problem," i.e., the problem of designing                        mechanisms for the pricing of goods and services that are                       transferred from one division of a firm to another.  A typical                  feature of this situation is that the relevant data, e.g., the                  costs of the supplier division and the benefits of the customer                 division, are not well known to the participants.  For example,                 it would be normal for the supplier's costs to be better known to               the supplier than the customer, and for the customer's benefits                 to be better known to the customer than the supplier.                                                                                                           This research project continues and extends work undertaken                     previously by the two investigators on sealed-bid mechanisms for                bargaining.  The sealed-bid procedure is one widely used method                 for structuring bargaining under incomplete information because                 it has a simple linear equilibrium with desirable welfare                       properties.  Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of other               equilibria with welfare properties that range from second-best                  optimal to zero.  As a practical matter, this mechanism is not                  very appealing, since there is no guarantee that the "good"                     equilibrium will be picked out of the infinity of other                         equilibria that exist.                                                                                                                                          The investigators conducted the first controlled laboratory                     experiments on the sealed-bid mechanism.  They demonstrated that                buyers and sellers bargaining under a sealed-bid mechanism on                   average chose the simple, linear bidding strategies that resulted               in "good" equilibria.  This project pursues a number of important               unresolved questions raised by these experiments.  For instance,                what exactly account for the emergence of step-function-like                    bidding behavior as the horizon of the experiment increases?  How               can we account for the asymmetrical behavior of the buyers and                  sellers in these experiments?  Why did unstructured face-to-face                bargaining perform better than all other forms of bargaining?                   Does "cheap talk," i.e., talk that does not have any binding                    impact on the eventual negotiations, influence the outcome of the               process?                                                                                                                                                        The project makes significant methodological and substantive                    contributions to our understanding of bargaining behavior.                      Methodologically, it demonstrates whether commonly used                         experimental practices such as identifying buyers and sellers or                repeating the experiment a small number of times bias the results               of bargaining experiments.  Substantively, it derives rigorously                and tests experimentally for the presence of regularities or                    "laws" in bidding behavior under incomplete information.
[{'FirstName': 'Andrew', 'LastName': 'Schotter', 'PI_MID_INIT': None, 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Andrew Schotter', 'EmailAddress': 'andrew.schotter@nyu.edu', 'PI_PHON': '2129988952', 'NSF_ID': '000181634', 'StartDate': '03/01/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}, {'FirstName': 'Roy', 'LastName': 'Radner', 'PI_MID_INIT': 'R', 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Roy R Radner', 'EmailAddress': 'rradner@stern.nyu.edu', 'PI_PHON': '2129980813', 'NSF_ID': '000311693', 'StartDate': '03/01/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Co-Principal Investigator'}]
{'Name': 'New York University', 'CityName': 'NEW YORK', 'ZipCode': '100121019', 'PhoneNumber': '2129982121', 'StreetAddress': '70 WASHINGTON SQ S', 'StreetAddress2': None, 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'New York', 'StateCode': 'NY', 'CONGRESSDISTRICT': '10', 'CONGRESS_DISTRICT_ORG': 'NY10', 'ORG_UEI_NUM': 'NX9PXMKW5KW8', 'ORG_LGL_BUS_NAME': 'NEW YORK UNIVERSITY', 'ORG_PRNT_UEI_NUM': 'NX9PXMKW5KW8'}
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{'Code': '1320', 'Text': 'Economics'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1987&All=true', 'xml': '8721277.xml'}