Waiting for the Right Offer: Laboratory Evidence on How News Affects Bargaining

Tingting Ding and Steven Lehrer ()

No 34543, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We conduct a series of laboratory experiments that implement the Daley and Green (2020) model to examine whether the gradual, exogenous revelation of sellers’ private information influences the occurrence of trades in a bilateral bargaining setting with a static lemon condition. We find that while information does not increase efficiency, it reduces the likelihood that buyers incur losses when trading with low-quality sellers. Anticipating that additional signals will arrive, buyers hesitate to finalize deals immediately and exhibit a “waiting for news” effect, making sizable offer adjustments only when sufficient positive signals have accumulated. In contrast, informed sellers are less sensitive to news but appear to wait for the offer that they deem acceptable.

JEL-codes: C70 C92 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
Note: IO
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34543.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34543

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34543
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().