Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/59700 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Nota di Lavoro No. 42.2012
Publisher: 
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milano
Abstract: 
This paper studies bargaining and exchange in a networked market with intermediation. Possibilities to trade are restricted through a network of existing relationships and traders bargain over the division of available gains from trade along different feasible routes. Using a stochastic model of bargaining, I characterize stationary equilibrium payoffs as the fixed point of a set of intuitive value function equations and study efficiency and the relationship between network structure and payoffs. In equilibrium, trade is never unduly delayed but it may take place too early and in states where delay would be efficient. The inefficiency arises from a hold-up threat and the inability of bargaining parties credibly to commit to a split in a future period. The model also shows how with competing trade routes as trade frictions go to zero agents that are not essential to a trade opportunity receive a payoff of zero.
Subjects: 
Stochastic Games
bargaining
Random Matching
Middlemen
Network
JEL: 
C73
C78
L14
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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