The costs and benefits of symmetry in common-ownership allocation problems

In experimental partnership dissolution problems with complete information, the divide-and-choose mechanism is significantly superior to the winner’s-bid auction. The performance of divide-and-choose is mainly affected by reciprocity issues and not by bounded rationality. The performance of the winner’s-bid auction is significantly affected by bounded rationality. Contrary to theoretical predictions divide-and-choose exhibits no first-mover bias. JEL classification: C91, D63, C72.