On the value of assessing preferences explicitly for bargaining

A game under uncertainty is used to investigate two value-of-information questions that arise in competitive situations: 1) Is it worthwhile for a bargainer to go through the effort of quantifying his own preferences over outcomes before bargaining? and 2) Should a bargainer prefer that his opponent quantify his preferences as well? The situation is modeled by a two-by-two, two-person game with complete information where one player´s payoffs are known with certainty but the other player´s payoffs are uncertain. It is shown that the player whose payoffs are uncertain always prefers to have the uncertainty resolved before bargaining, but that the player whose payoffs are known may or may not prefer to have the uncertainty resolved before bargaining depending on other aspects of the game. Detailed results are given for an example that encompasses a wide range of fixed-sum variable-sum, noncooperative, and cooperative games. Broader implications of the finding are suggested.