Transparency, complementarity and holdout

Prabal Roy Chowdhury () and Kunal Sengupta ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2012, vol. 75, issue 2, 598-612

Abstract: This article characterizes the conditions under which holdout (i.e. bargaining inefficiency) may, or may not be significant in a two-sided, one-buyer-many-seller model with complementarity. Our central result is that the severity of holdout (i.e. inefficiency) is critically dependent on three issues, (a) the transparency of the bargaining protocol, (b) the outside option of the buyer, and (c) the marginal contribution of the last seller. We find that although the accepted wisdom that holdout is severe, goes through whenever either the buyer has no outside option, or the bargaining protocol is secret, the holdout problem however is largely resolved whenever either the bargaining protocol is transparent and the buyer has a positive outside option, or if the marginal contribution of the last seller is not too large.

Keywords: Multi-person bargaining; Holdout; Complementarity; Efficiency; Secret offers; Public offers; Coase theorem; Transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D23 D62 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Transparency, Complementarity and Holdout (2010)
Working Paper: Transparency, complementarity and holdout (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:75:y:2012:i:2:p:598-612

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2012.01.003

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