סמינר בניהול טכנולוגיה ומערכות מידע

Matthew Backus. Columbia Graduate School of  Business

Bargaining  breakdown - whether as delay, conflict, or missing trade - plagues bargaining in environments with incomplete information. Does communication alleviate these costs? Prior theoretical and experimental evidence is ambivalent. We examine this question using field data from an online bargaining marketplace: eBay Germany’s Best Offer platform. On May 23, 2016, the platform introduced unstructured communication allowing buyers and sellers on the desktop version of the site, but not the mobile app, to accompany price offers with a message. Using this natural experiment, our differences- in-differences approach documents a 14% decrease in the rate of breakdown among compliers.