A Simulation Model of the Price Bargaining Rules in Vertical Relationships

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the price and quantity bargaining between four agents, in a current industrial structure, with a special attention to the price bargaining. The structure combines a bilateral monopoly in a market for inputs, and a duopoly in a final market. After a simplified presentation of a model which proposes equilibrium solutions to the bargaining, we present the protocol and the results of an experiment whose objective is twofold. The first one is to test the assumptions of the model. The second one is to identify behavioral models and bargaining rules for a work of simulation. The experimental results do not confirm the solutions of the theoretical model, which predicted a Nash solution for the price bargaining, and used the cournot conjecture in the quantity bargaining. A detailed analysis of the results leads to some observations useful to parameterize a simulation model. The simulation runs a systematic analysis of the dynamics of the bargaining rules in this structure.