Breakdown in Multilateral Negotiations

We analyze a complete information multilateral bargaining model in which a buyer is to purchase several complementary goods from several sellers. Binding cash-offer contracts are used to govern transactions. In contrast to the preexisting literature, we do not normalize the parties' reservation utilities to zero. This allows us to demonstrate that in a large class of bargaining games a complete breakdown of negotiations can occur as the unique equilibrium outcome even if only two sellers are present