Negotiation-range mechanisms: Exploring the limits of truthful efficient markets

This paper introduces a new class of mechanisms based on negotiation between market participants. This model allows us to circumvent Myerson and Satterthwaite's impossibility result and present a bilateral market mechanism that is efficient, individually rational, incentive compatible and budget balanced in the single-unit heterogeneous setting. The underlying scheme makes this combination of desirable qualities possible by reporting a price range for each buyer-seller pair that defines a zone of possible agreements, while the final price is left open for negotiation.