Arbeitspapier

Bilateral trade with loss-averse agents

The endowment and attachment effect are empirically well-documented in bilateral trade situations. Yet, the theoretical literature has so far failed to formally identify these effects. We fill this gap by introducing expectations-based loss aversion, which can explain both effects, into the classical setting by Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983). This allows us to formally identify the endowment and attachment effect and study their impact on information rents, allowing us to show that, in contrast to other behavioral approaches to the bilateral trade problem, the impossibility of inducing materially efficient trade persists in the presence of loss aversion. We then turn to the design of optimal mechanisms and consider the problem of maximizing the designer's revenue as well as gains from trade. We find that the designer optimally provides the agents with full insurance in the money dimension and, depending on the distribution of types, optimally increases or decreases the trade frequency in the presence of loss aversion.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Working Paper ; No. 188

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Expectations; Speculations
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡
Thema
bilateral trade
loss aversion
mechanism design
endowment and attachment effect
Mechanismus-Design-Theorie
Rent Seeking
Verlustaversion
Bilateraler Handel
Mechanismus-Design-Theorie
Rent Seeking
Verlustaversion
Bilateraler Handel

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Benkert, Jean-Michel
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
University of Zurich, Department of Economics
(wo)
Zurich
(wann)
2022

DOI
doi:10.5167/uzh-109940
Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ

Datenpartner

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Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Benkert, Jean-Michel
  • University of Zurich, Department of Economics

Entstanden

  • 2022

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