Misvaluation and the dynamics of bilateral trading

Abstract

Subjective biases and errors systematically affect market equilibria, whether at the population level or in bilateral trading. Here, we consider the possibility that an agent engaged in bilateral trading is mistaken about her own valuation of the good she expects to trade, that has not been explicitly incorporated into the existing bilateral trade literature. Although it may sound paradoxical that a subjective private valuation is something an agent can be mistaken about, as it is up to her to fix it, we consider the case in which that agent, seller or buyer, consciously or not, given the structure of a market, a type of good, and a temporary lack of information, may arrive at an erroneous valuation. The typical context through which this possibility may arise is in relation with so-called experience goods, which are sold while all their intrinsic qualities are still unknown (such as untasted bottled fine wines). We model this “private misvaluation” phenomenon in our study. The agents may also be mistaken about how their exchange counterparties are themselves mistaken. Formally, they attribute a certain margin of error to the other agent, which can differ from the actual way that another agent misvalues the good under consideration. This can constitute the source of a second-order misvaluation. We model different attitudes and situations in which agents face unexpected signals from.