On Delay in Bargaining with One-Sided Uncertainty.

Recently, attention has been given to a model of two-person bargaining in which the parties alternate making of fers and there is uncertainty about the valuation of one party. The p urpose of the analysis has been to identify delay to agreement with a screening process, where agents with relatively lower valuations dis tinguish themselves by waiting longer to settle. The authors point ou t a fundamental difficulty with this program by demonstrating that th e assumptions used in the literature allow for delay only in so far a s the time between offers is significant. Copyright 1988 by The Econometric Society.