We model costly preparations in negotiations and study their effect on agreements in a bilateral bargaining game. In our model, players bargain over a unit pie, where each player needs to pay a fixed cost in the beginning of every period t, if he wants to stay in the game in period t+1 in case a deal has not been reached by the end of t. Whether a player has paid this cost (i.e., prepared for negotiations in t+1) is his private information. If only player i stops paying, then player j receives the entire pie. We characterize a “war of attrition” equilibrium, which is a symmetric equilibrium. We do not know whether the game has other symmetric equilibria, but we show that if such an equilibrium exists, its payoff converges to zero as the frictions (discounting and preparation cost) vanish. Efficiency can be obtained by asymmetric play. Specifically, with asymmetric strategies every Pareto‐efficient payoff vector can be approximated in equilibrium, provided that the cost of preparations is sufficiently small and that the discount factor is sufficiently close to one.

中文翻译：

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讨价还价的昂贵准备工作*

我们在谈判中为昂贵的准备工作建模，并在双边讨价还价博弈中研究其对协议的影响。在我们的模型中，玩家讨价还价，每个玩家需要在每个周期t的开始支付固定费用，如果他想在t +1期间留在游戏中，以防达成交易。t的结尾。玩家是否已经支付了这笔费用（即准备在t +1进行谈判）是他的私人信息。如果只有玩家i停止付款，则玩家j收到整个馅饼。我们描述了“消耗战”均衡，这是一个对称均衡。我们不知道该博弈是否具有其他对称均衡，但我们表明，如果存在这种均衡，则随着摩擦（贴现和准备成本）消失，其收益会收敛至零。效率可以通过不对称博弈获得。特别是，采用非对称策略，只要准备成本足够小且折现因子足够接近一个，就可以使每个帕累托有效收益向量都处于均衡状态。