Bargaining over an Uncertain Value: Arbitration Mechanisms Compared

This article explores the theoretical and behavioral impactof conventional arbitration and final-offer arbitration (FOA)when parties are bargaining over an uncertain value. In thiscontext, one player receives a fixed payment while the otherplayer receives the uncertain residual. Although both formsof arbitration have identically sized contract zones, we showtheoretically that in FOA the contract zone shifts in favorof the residual claimant. In addition, as the variance of thepossible values rises, the contract zone shifts further in favorof the residual claimant. In laboratory testing, the contractzone roughly reflects the central tendencies of behavior; however,both forms of arbitration increase conflict relative to a no-arbitrationbaseline. This is caused by residual claimants being more aggressivewhen arbitration is available while fixed-payment recipientsare not. However, both parties play a role in the conflict escalationdue to the increased proposal variation.     

完善银行内部控制系统初探

外资银行在我国的组织机构和业务领域不断拓展，我国金融领域的开放逐步深入，同时面对世界经济金融一体化和国内金融业体制上深化改革与业务上创新发展的内外环境，我国银行必将面临诸多的经营和管理风险，这就要求我们必须建立健全既适应我国银行经营管理体制，又符合改革发展要求的银行内部控制系统，提高银行风险防范与自我控制能力，最大限度地降低加快改革与谋求发展过程中的各种风险。     

Strategic Bargaining and Competitive Bidding in a Dynamic Market Equilibrium

This paper extends the bargaining and matching literature, such as Rubinstein and Wolinsky (1985), by considering a new matching process. We assume that a central information agency exists, such as real estate agencies in the housing market and employment agencies (or newspapers) in the labour market, which puts traders into direct contact with each other. With heterogeneity of trader preferences, equilibrium trade is characterized by existing traders on each side of the market trying to match with the flow of new traders on the other side (since existing traders have already sampled and rejected each other). Two procedures of trade co-exist, namely a strategic bilateral bargaining process and a competitive bidding process, depending on the number of potential matches a new trader obtains. We characterize the unique symmetric Markov perfect equilibrium to this stochastic trading game.     

Equilibrium Partner Switching in a Bargaining Model With Asymmetric Information

We study a model in which the seller of an indivisible object faces two potential buyers and makes an offer to either of them in each period. We find that the seller's ability to extract surplus from them depends crucially on the value of the cost of switching from one buyer to the next. If the seller is pessimistic about the buyers' valuations and there is a switching cost, however small, then the market is a natural bilateral monopoly; the second buyer is never called on. If the switching cost is zero, or if the seller is optimistic, then switching, and possibly recall of the original buyer, may occur.     

Flexible and Committed Profit Sharing with Wage Bargaining: Implications for Equilibrium Unemployment

We analyze the relationship between profit sharing, employee effort, wage formation and unemployment under different relative timings of the wage and profit sharing decisions. The optimal profit share under commitment exceeds that under flexibility, because through a profit share commitment the firm can induce wage moderation. The negotiated profit sharing depends positively on the bargaining power of trade union and it has both effort-enhancing and wage-moderating effects. Higher profit sharing is shown to reduce equilibrium unemployment under ``sufficiently rigid' labor market institutions, but it can harm employment when labor market ``rigidities' are ``small enough'.     

Equilibrium in Auction and Bargaining Markets When Agents Can Wait and Search

The paper studies two market structures and two modes of trade. The agents, buyers and sellers, can choose whether to stay or search. The meetings take place randomly, and trades are consummated by auction or by bargaining. There are altogether four possible markets but in equilibrium at most two markets are active simultaneously. There is almost always a unique evolutionary stable equilibrium which consists of an auction market when the numbers of buyers and sellers differ greatly, and two simultaneous auction markets when the numbers are relatively close.     

Timeliness of Farming Operations as a Determinant of Equilibrium Wages with Excess Labor Supply: A Strategic Bargaining Approach

Data from predominantly rural economies show that, despite persistent involuntary unemployment, wages have been rising. However, the theoretical literature offers a scenario of largely rigid wages. This paper proposes a theory of strategic bargaining between individual laborers and farmers based on a characteric of production that is unique to farming, namely, sensitivity of output to timeliness of farmwork. The key argument is that despite risk of unemployment and threat of wage undercutting by those unemployed, a laborer in a competitive market setting can credibly threaten to refuse low-wage offers and impose some of the cost of delay on farmers.     

Wage Bargaining Versus Efficiency Wages: A Synthesis

We construct a model integrating the efficiency wage model of Shapiro–Stiglitz (1984) (SS), with an individual wage bargaining model in the Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides (DMP) tradition where firms and workers form pairwise matches. We show that when workers may threaten to shirk on the job and there is individual wage bargaining, the wage is always higher and employment lower than in either the SS model, or the (appropriately modified) DMP model. When firms determine workers' efforts unilaterally, efforts are set inefficiently low in the SS model. In the bargaining model, effort is higher, and is first best when the worker non–shirking constraint does not bind. The overall equilibrium allocation may then be more or less efficient than in the SS model, but is always less efficient than in a pure bargaining model with no moral hazard.     

A Note on Multi-Issue Two-Sided Bargaining: Bilateral Procedures

This note considers a two-sided multi-issue bargaining problem in which players that belong to the same “side” may have conflicting priorities regarding the different negotiated issues. The note examines different bilateral bargaining procedures and shows the different equilibrium settlements that they yield. In particular the note examines the possibility that group heterogeneity (conflicting priorities) may be exploited in order to gain a better settlement. The different potential outcomes that are implied by the different procedures explain why we often observe such intense negotiation over bargaining procedures. Moreover, the conflict over procedure can be substantial, among parties with common interest as well as between opposing players. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C7.     

Optimal Factor Taxation under Wage Bargaining: A Dynamic Perspective

Abstract. We consider the issue of steady-state optimal factor taxation in a Ramsey-type dynamic general equilibrium setting with two distinct distortions: (i) taxes on capital and labour are the only available tax instruments for raising revenues and (ii) labour markets are subject to an inefficiency resulting from wage bargaining. If considered in isolation, the two distortions create conflicting demands on the wage tax, while calling for a zero capital tax. By combining the two distortions, we arrive at the conclusion that both instruments should be used, implying that the zero capital tax result in general is no longer valid under imperfectly competitive labour markets.     

Shackle on Equilibrium: A Critique

This paper presents a critical evaluation of Shackle's views on economic method. Shackle's arguments against equilibrium analysis are shown to apply to orthodox theory, which has subjectivist foundations, but not to the objectivist classical approach associated with Sraffa. The long-period equilibrium method is indispensable to the analysis of how market societies function. Moreover, since the classical theory contains no trace of the factor substitution mechanisms that underpin neoclassical orthodoxy, its explanations of distribution, employment and outputs must take explicit account of institutions, power and ethical norms. Thus there is no conflict between social economics and the method of the classical economists and Sraffa. On the contrary, the classical approach provides a rigorous framework for the investigation of the very issues that are at the center of institutional and social economics.     

Industry-Level Wage Bargaining: A Partial Rehabilitation—The German Experience

In order to reduce unemployment, it is often recommended that industry-level wage bargaining in Germany should be replaced by a more decentralized system. This paper provides a critical assessment of the current wage bargaining institutions and re-examines the case for a more decentralized system. Based on a theoretical model integrating Insider–Outsider aspects into the comparison, the uniformly superior employment performance of a decentralized wage bargaining system is questioned. We conclude that, rather than solely trying to decentralize wage bargaining, a promising policy option may be to improve the skills of the unemployed by efficient labour market policies and to foster institutional reforms such that wage bargaining takes account of the long-run employment consequences of wage setting.     

Agency Cost of Debt and Credit Market Imperfections: A Bargaining Approach

This paper studies the effect of credit market imperfections, measured by the relative bargaining power of banks, on the agency costs of debt finance. The threshold of obtaining loan finance is shown to be independent of the relative bargaining power of the financier. However, lower relative bargaining power of banks leads to lower lending rates and investment return distributions with lower, but less risky returns. Thus, our analysis does not support the view, presented in a large existing literature, that there would be a trade‐off between reduced credit market imperfections and higher agency costs of debt finance.     

转轨国家的机制性腐败:一个一般均衡模型

本文通过一个一般均衡模型考察腐败对经济福利,分工的网络规模以及社会生产力的影响,我们首先计算了在每个个体均可自由择业的市场经济中的瓦尔拉斯均衡。然后考察当一个特权集团被选定为高层管理者时对社会福利产生的影响;最后考虑在管理者通过其代理人而形成共谋时的情形,即机制性腐败,此时,这个代理人通过索取一笔相当于贿赂的进入费用来为管理者的利益服务,而这时的管理者服务的价格仍然由一个瓦尔拉斯市场的供给和需求决定。该模型表明腐败增加了转轨国家特权集团（包括腐败的官员以及与其密切联关的人）的福利,并以牺牲大众的利益为代价。     

A Precautionary Tale of Uncertain Tail Fattening

Suppose that there is a probability density function for how bad things might get, but that the overall rate at which this probability density function slims down to approach zero in the tail is uncertain. The paper shows how a basic precautionary principle of tail fattening could then apply. The worse is the contemplated damage, the more should a decision maker consider the bad tail to be among the relatively fatter-tailed possibilities. A rough numerical example is applied to the uncertain tail distribution of climate sensitivity.     

Externality Policy Reform: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We characterize Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving policy reforms in a second‐best (Diamond/Mirrlees) world with a consumption externality. A counterintuitive finding is that, starting from an initial equilibrium with no direct quantity control on the externality, it is possible that all Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving directions of change require an increase in a negative externality. We provide intuition for these results by establishing a nexus between Guesnerie's approach to designing (tax) policy reforms and the standard Kuhn–Tucker technique for identifying the manifold of feasible Pareto‐optimal states, given the instruments available to the policy maker.     

Bargaining in the Shadow of Power

Often a bargainer can use some form of power—legal, military, or political—to impose a settlement. How does the “outside” option of being able to impose a settlement, albeit at some cost, affect the bargaining? And, how does the probability that the bargaining will break down vary with the distribution of power between the bargainers? These questions are examined by adding the option of imposing a settlement to Rubinstein's game of dividing a pie. Each actor can accept an offer, make a counteroffer, or try to impose a solution. Imposing a settlement is, however, costly and each bargainer has private information about its cost.Journal of Economic Literatureclassification number: C72.     

Bargaining in the transfer market: theory and evidence

This paper examines the transfer market for association football players as operated in the English Football League using transfer data for the 1990–91 season. After describing the purposes and procedures involved in the transfer system together with the motives of the participants, we apply two-person bargaining theory to analyse the determination of transfer fees. The data and estimation procedures are explained and the results reported and interpreted. Our analysis suggests that the Nash bargaining theory captures the salient features of the bargaining process in the footballer's transfer market.