Competition in Posted Prices With Bargaining

In this paper we study price competition between firms when some consumers attempt tobargain while others buy at the public list or posted prices. Even though bargainers succeed innegotiating discounts off the list prices, their presence dampens competitive pressure in the marketby reducing the incentive to undercut a rival’s list price, thus raising all prices and increasingprofits. Welfare falls because of the uncertainty in the bargaining process, which generates somemisallocation of products to consumers. We also find that the bargainers facilitate collusion byreducing the market share that can be gained from a deviation.