Over-confidence may reduce negotiation delay

When a seller negotiates with multiple buyers, how does over-confidence affect the timing of trade? In this paper we distinguish between over-confidence about trade opportunities and over-confidence about the terms of trade. In bargaining environments without externalities both types of over-confidence can cause delays in agreement. If externalities are present the two forms of subjective bias have very different impacts on delay. In particular, over-confidence about trade opportunities may reduce bargaining delay.