Nash’s (1950) theory and related theories of bargaining are frequently criticized for their lack of empirical content, since their predictions depend on the bargainers’ von :Jeumann-Morgenstern utility functions, which are not directly observable. The purpose of this letter is to suggest that an approach recently taken by Kurz (1977, 1978) in a somewhat different context may provide a remedy fo...

Bargaining with Imperfect Enforcement* The game-theoretic bargaining literature insists on non-cooperative bargaining procedure but allows 'cooperative' implementation of agreements. The effect of this is to allow free-reign of bargaining power with no check upon it. In reality, courts cannot implement agreements costlessly, and parties often prefer to use 'non-cooperative' implementation. We p...

Solution uniqueness is an important property for a bargaining model. Rubinstein’s (1982) seminal 2-person alternating-offer bargaining game has a unique Subgame Perfect Equilibrium outcome. Is it possible to obtain uniqueness results in the much enlarged setting of multilateral bargaining with a characteristic function? In an exploratory effort, this paper investigates a model first proposed in...

A new treatment to determine the Pareto-optimal outcome for a non-zero-sum game is presented. An equilibrium point for any game is defined here as a set of strategy choices for the players, such that no change in the choice of any single player will increase the overall payoff of all the players. Determining equilibrium for multi-player games is a complex problem. An intuitive conceptual tool f...

We study the role of an imbalance in fighting strengths when players bargain in the shadow of conflict. Our experimental results suggest: In a simple bargaining game with an exogenous mediation proposal, the likelihood of conflict is independent of the balance of power. If bargaining involves endogenous demand choices, however, the likelihood of conflict is higher if power is more imbalanced. E...

Abstract: Although military cooperation among rebel groups in multi-party civil wars could help rebels defeat or extract concessions from an incumbent government, violent conflict among rebel groups is empirically prevalent. Why do rebel groups in multi-actor civil wars choose to fight one another? This paper models the strategic dilemma facing rebel groups in multi-party civil wars as an alter...

In typical experiments on ultimatum bargaining, the game is described verbally and the majority of subjects deviate from subgame-perfect behavior. Proposers typically offer significantly more than the minimum possible and responders reject “unfair” offers. In this work, we show that when the ultimatum bargaining game is presented as an abstract game tree, the vast majority of behavior is consis...

We propose two simple mechanisms that implement two bargaining sets in super-additive environments. The first bargaining set is a close variation of the one Ž . proposed by L. Zhou 1994, Games Econom. Beha ̈. 6, 512]526 , and the second is Ž the Pareto optimum payoffs of the A. Mas-Colell 1989, J. Math. Econom. 18, . 129]139 bargaining set. We adopt a simple framework in which the cooperative ou...

Two deviations of alternating-offer bargaining behavior from economic theory are observed together, yet have been studied separately. Players who could secure themselves a large surplus share if bargainers were purely self-interested incompletely exploit their advantage. Delay in agreement occurs even if all experimentally controlled information is common knowledge. This paper rationalizes both...

We show that the core of a continuous convex game on a measurable space of players is a von Neumann Morgenstern stable set. We also extend the definition of the Mas Colell bargaining set to games with a measurable space of players and show that for continuous convex games the core may be strictly included in the bargaining set but it coincides with the set of all countably additive payoff measu...