The Role of Reference-Dependent Preferences in Auctions and Negotiations

This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the role that reference-dependentpreferences and loss aversion play in auctions and negotiations.The first chapter characterizes the profit-maximizing pricing and product-availability strategies for a retailer selling two substitute goods to loss-averse consumers, showing that limited-availability sales can manipulate consumers into an ex-ante unfavorable purchase. When the products have similar social value, the seller maximizes profits by raising the consumers' reference point through a tempting discount on a good available only in limited supply (the bargain) and cashing in with a high price on the other good (the rip-off), which the consumers buy if the bargain is not available to minimize their disappointment. The price difference between the bargain and the rip-off is larger when the products are close substitutes than when they are distant substitutes; hence dispersion in prices and dispersion in consumers' valuations are inversely related. The seller might prefer to offer a deal on the more valuable product, using it as a bait, because consumers feel a larger loss, in terms of forgone consumption, if this item is not available and are hence willing to pay a larger premium to reduce the uncertainty in their consumption outcomes. I also show that the bargain item can be a loss leader, that the seller's product line is not welfare-maximizing and that she might supply a socially wasteful product.The second chapter studies sequential first-price and second-price auctions when bidders are expectations-based loss-averse. A large body of empirical research in auctions documents that prices of identical products sold sequentially tend to decline across auctions (a phenomenon which has been dubbed declining price anomaly or afternoon effect , as often later auctions take place in the afternoon whereas the first ones usually take place in the morning) . In this chapter I argue that expectations-based reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion provide an alternative, preference-based, explanation for the afternoon effect observed in sequential auctions. First, I show that when bidders have reference-dependent preferences, the equilibrium bidding functions are history-dependent, even if bidders have independent private values. The reason is that learning the type of the winner in the previous auction modifies a bidder's expectations about how likely he is to win in the current auction; and since expectations are the reference point, the optimal bid in each round is affected by this learning effect. More precisely, I identify what I call a discouragement effect : the higher the type of the winner in the first auction is, the less aggressively the bidding behavior of the remaining bidders in the second auction. This discouragement effect in turn pushes bidders to bid more aggressively in the earlier auction. Moreover, the uncertainty about future own bids, due to the history-dependence of the equilibrium strategies, generates a precautionary bidding effect that pushes bidders to bid less aggressively in the first auction. The precautionary bidding effect and the anticipation of the discouragement effect go in opposite directions; when the latter effect is stronger, a declining price path arises in equilibrium.The third chapter studies the role of expectations-based reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion in a sequential bargaining game with one-sided incomplete information between a seller who makes all the offers and a buyer. I show that loss aversion eases the rent-efficiency trade-off for the seller who can now serve a larger measuer of consumers at an earlier stage. Thus, in equilibrium the seller achieves higher profits and we have less delay with loss aversion than without it. Furthermore, I also show that, besides increasing the seller's profit and overall trade efficiency, loss aversion also reallocates surplus among consumers by increasing the equilibrium payoff of some low-valuation buyers and decreasing that of high-valuation ones.