Paper
Paper

Behavioral Biases in Agentic Commerce.

Seven controlled experiments, three frontier models, 8,280 runs. The full preprint is being prepared for posting.

Abstract

When two large language models transact as commercial agents, do the cognitive biases each model inherits from its training data persist, wash out, or amplify? We answer with seven controlled experiments — bilateral negotiation, decoy effect, information overload, private and common-value auctions, strategic exploitation, prompt-based debiasing, and continuous double auctions — across three frontier models and 8,280 runs.

We find selective and consistent vulnerability: agents play near-equilibrium in private-value auctions and resist information overload, but anchor more strongly than humans in bilateral bargaining, are systematically exploitable by an informed counterparty (mean surplus extraction of $6.47), and collapse allocative efficiency from ~98% to under 20% when biased participants populate a multi-agent market. Generic debiasing prompts fail; specific named-bias warnings provide partial mitigation.

Authors

Anton Hantel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author thanks Prof. Cass Sunstein for feedback throughout this project, and the Behavioral Economics, Law and Public Policy seminar (Harvard Law School, HLS 2589) for discussion.

Cite

@article{hantel2026behavioral,
  title  = {Behavioral Biases in Agentic Commerce:
            Evidence from Agent-to-Agent Interactions},
  author = {Hantel, Anton},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Behavioral Economics, Law and Public Policy,
            Harvard Law School (HLS 2589), Prof. Cass Sunstein}
}