www.econstor.eu TRANSACTIONS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON PRICES

This paper studies data from the wholesale fruit and vegetables market in Marseille. The special feature of the data is that we have details of counteroffers to the prices that were proposed by the seller even when no transaction took place. Each offer, counteroffer and refusal conveys information to the two parties concerned about the state of the market since no prices are posted and ∗ A first version of this paper was presented at the First World Congress of the Game Theory Society in Bilbao. Helpful comments from the participants there and from Alessandra Casella, Veronika Grimm, Sylvie Thoron and Jorgen Weibull are gratefully acknowledged. Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 373 is gratefully acknowledged.