This article provides identification and estimation methods for a model of contracting with externalities and imperfect information. In this model, one principal offers a contract of trade quantity to each of multiple agents, and the negotiated payment for each agent is determined via Nash bargaining. Beliefs matter due to the privacy of bilateral contracting and the externalities from the dependence of each agent's payoff on all agents' trade quantities. We provide a test to determine whether passive or symmetric beliefs fit a given data set better. The empirical results suggest the relevance of adopting the correct beliefs for policy evaluations.

中文翻译：

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在与外部合同中测试被动对等对称信念

本文为具有外部性和不完善信息的契约模型提供了识别和估计方法。在此模型中，一个委托人向多个代理中的每个代理提供贸易量合同，并且通过纳什讨价还价确定每个代理的协商付款。信念之所以重要，是因为双边签约的私密性以及外部性（每个代理人的收益依赖于所有代理人的交易量）所致。我们提供了一项测试，以确定被动或对称信念是否更适合给定的数据集。实证结果表明，采用正确的信念进行政策评估具有重要意义。