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Generosity in bargaining: Fair or fear?

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  • Breitmoser, Yves
  • Tan, Jonathan H.W.

Abstract

Are "generous" bargaining offers made out of fairness or in fear of rejection? We disentangle risk and social references by analyzing experimental behavior in three majority bargaining games: (1) a random-proposer game with infinite time horizon; 2) a one round proposer game with disagreement payoffs equal to the infinite horizon continuation payoffs; and, (3) a demand commitment game. Inequity aversion predicts very differently across these games, but risk aversion does not. Observed strategies violate neither stationarity nor truncation consistency. This allows us to use structural models of bargaining behavior to estimate the latent type shares of subjects with CES, inequity averse, and Prospect theoretic preferences. The Prospect theoretic, i.e. reference-dependent, model of utility explains the observations far better than any mixture of alternative models.

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  • Breitmoser, Yves & Tan, Jonathan H.W., 2010. "Generosity in bargaining: Fair or fear?," MPRA Paper 27444, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:27444
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    1. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & Meshalkin, Andrey & Predtetchinski, Arkadi, 2018. "Subgame perfect equilibria in majoritarian bargaining," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 101-112.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    coalitional bargaining; non-cooperative modeling; random utility model; quantal response equilibrium; laboratory experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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