The Structure of Negotiations: Incomplete Agreements and the Focusing Effect

Abstract

Two negotiating parties with preferences distorted by the focusing effect (Koszegi and Szeidl, 2013) may implement an agreement that is inefficient. In particular, an issue will be inefficiently left out of the agreement or inefficiently included in the agreement whenever the importance of the other issues on the table is sufficiently large. In extreme cases, this could lead to an inefficient breakdown of the negotiation. Anticipating this possibility, the negotiating parties may negotiate in stages, by first signing an incomplete agreement and later finalizing the outcome of the negotiation. As in Raiffa (1982), these incomplete agreements may impose bounds on some dimensions of the bargaining solution in order to reduce their salience.