Ascending auctions offer agents the option to wait and see before deciding to drop out. We show that in contexts where as time proceeds agents get finer and finer estimates of their valuations, incentives to drop out at one's expected valuation are weak: it is optimal for agents to wait and see....

We consider bargaining problems in which parties have access to outside options, the size of the pie is commonly known and each party privately knows the realization of her outside option. We allow for correlations in the distributions of outside options. Parties have a veto right, which allows...

This paper identifies a source of gradualism in bargaining andcontribution games. In the bargaining games we examine, each partycan opt out at any time, and the outside option outcome is assumed todepend on the offers made in the negotiation phase. Specifically, we assumethat (1) making a...