Multilateral subsidy games

This paper examines the rationale for multilateral agreements to limit investment subsidies. The welfare ranking of symmetric multilateral subsidy games is shown to depend on whether or not investment levels are “friendly”, raising rival profits in total, and/or strategic complements, raising rival profits at the margin. In both Cournot and Bertrand competition, when spillovers are low and competition is intense (because goods are close substitutes), national-welfare-maximizing governments over-subsidize investment, and banning subsidies would improve welfare. When spillovers are high, national governments under-subsidize from a global welfare perspective, but the subsidy game is welfare superior to non-intervention. For helpful comments we are grateful to two referees, to Arijit Mukherjee, and to participants in seminars at Prague and UCD, at the EEA Conference in Lausanne and at the GEP Conference on “New Directions in International Trade Theory” at the University of Nottingham, June 2007. Dermot Leahy acknowledges the support of the Science Foundation Ireland Research Frontiers Programme (Grant MAT 017).     

Pattern Bargaining*

Many unions in the United States have for several years engaged in what is known as pattern bargaining. In this article, we show that pattern bargaining is preferred by a union to both simultaneous industry‐wide negotiations and sequential negotiations without a pattern. Allowing for interfirm productivity differentials within an industry, we show that for small differentials, the union most prefers a pattern in wages, but for a sufficiently wide differential, the union prefers a pattern in labor costs. Finally, we demonstrate that pattern bargaining can be a significant entry deterrent. This provides an explanation for why incumbent firms in an industry may support the use of pattern bargaining in labor negotiations.     

Bargaining over Public Goods

In a simple public good economy, we propose a natural bargaining procedure, the equilibria of which converge to Lindahl allocations as the cost of bargaining vanishes. The procedure splits the decision over the allocation in a decision about personalized prices and a decision about output levels for the public good. Since this procedure does not assume price-taking behavior, it provides a strategic foundation for the personalized taxes inherent in the Lindahl solution to the public goods problem.     

Bargaining one-dimensional social choices

We analyze bargaining over the one-dimension characteristic of a public good among n impatient players when decisions require q favorable votes, q?2. Stationary subgame perfect equilibrium strategies are characterized for all games with deterministic protocol. We provide a monotonicity condition (satisfied by all single-peak, strictly quasi-concave and concave utilities) that assures uniqueness for every q whenever player's utilities are symmetric around the peak. Without symmetry, the monotonicity condition assures uniqueness for qualified majorities, q>n/2, provided that agents are sufficiently patient and utilities satisfy an additional regularity condition. Asymptotic uniqueness is assured for qualified majorities by imposing only the monotonicity condition.     

Bargaining with subjective mixtures

This paper reconsiders the Bargaining Problem of Nash (Econometrica 28:155–162, 1950). I develop a new approach, Conditional Bargaining Problems, as a framework for measuring cardinal utility. A Conditional Bargaining Problem is the conjoint extension of a Bargaining Problem, conditional on the fact that the individuals have agreed on a “measurement event”. Within this context, Subjective Mixture methods are especially powerful. These techniques are used to characterise versions of the Nash and the Kalai–Smorodinsky solutions. This approach identifies solutions based only on the individuals’ tastes for the outcomes. It is therefore possible to do Bargaining theory in almost complete generality. The results apply to Biseparable preferences, so are valid for almost all non-expected utility models currently used in economics.     

The Timing of Multilateral Lending

Bargaining over the terms of multilateral lending can be a prolonged process. We model failure to come to quick agreement as a screening device. Policy makers who find conditionality especially costly delay to signal their type. We show that increased costs to not reaching agreement, whether borne by borrowers or lenders, can increase the chances of delay.     

Bargaining with endogenous information

This paper analyses information acquisition in ultimatum bargaining with common values. Because of an endogenous lemons problem the equilibrium payoffs of the agents are non-monotonic in the information cost. The mere possibility of information acquisition can cause no trade although the agents maintain symmetric information in equilibrium and the gain from trade is common knowledge. The agent responding to a take-it-or-leave-it offer may capture some or even the full trading surplus in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium. The implications for sequential bargaining are discussed.     

Social Comparisons in Ultimatum Bargaining

Experiments are used to examine the effects of social comparisons in ultimatum bargaining. We inform responders about the average offer before they decide whether to accept or reject their specific offer. This significantly increases offers and offer‐specific rejection probabilities. For comparison, we consider another change in informational conditions: telling responders the total pie is $30—ex ante it was either $15 or $30—affects offers and rejection probabilities roughly as much. Our results are consistent with people’s dislike for deviations from the norm of equity but inconsistent with fairness theories, where people dislike income disparity between themselves and their referents.     

Taxation and Wage Bargaining*

The paper analyzes the effects of personal taxes on wage bargaining It concludes that an increase in tax progressivity will normally increase union wage-bargaining pressure and so raise the equilibrium wage This is the opposite result to that recently derived by Creedy and McDonald (1990).     

Bargaining Outcomes with Double-Offer Arbitration

Increasingly, arbitration is becoming used to resolve bargaining disputes in a variety of settings. Reducing dispute rates is often listed as a main goal in designing arbitration mechanisms. Conventional arbitration and final-offer arbitration are two commonly used procedures, but theoretical examinations of these arbitration procedures show that disputants’ final bargaining positions do not converge and disagreement is likely. This article contains results from a set of experiments designed to compare bargaining outcomes under the two commonly used arbitration procedures with outcomes under an innovative procedure called “double-offer” arbitration (Zeng et al., 1996). This procedure requires that disputants make two final offers at impasse: a primary and a secondary offer. The arbitrator evaluates the pairs of offers using a linear criterion function, and theory suggests the secondary offers converge to the median of the arbitrator’s preferred settlement distribution. Because the procedure’s rules are that convergence of offers generates a settlement at those offers, this theoretical convergence result implies that arbitration is not needed in the end. Experimental results indicate that dispute rates in double-offer arbitration are, on average, about the same as dispute rates in conventional arbitration. However, other results show reason to favor double-offer arbitration. Specifically, in repeated bargaining, there is concern over whether use of an arbitration procedure becomes addictive and makes bargainers more likely to use the procedure in the future-a “narcotic effect.” The data show that double-offer arbitration is non-addictive, whereas both conventional and final-offer arbitration are.     

Penalty Rates and Enterprise Bargaining

Industrial relations procedures in both Australia and New Zealand are changing from a system based on centralised arbitration towards enterprise level negotiation. This article considers how this change will affect overtime and other penalty rate payments. In particular, we show how, despite the existence of a legislative ‘safety net’, enterprise level negotiations can lead to the widespread removal of penalty rates, possibly to the detriment of both employees and employers. Such changes will, however, enhance competition and benefit consumers.     

Bargaining, coalitions and competition

We study a Gale-like matching model in a large exchange economy, in which trade takes place through non-cooperative bargaining in coalitions of finite size. Under essentially the same conditions of core equivalence, we show that the strategic equilibrium outcomes of our model coincide with the Walrasian allocations of the economy. Our method of proof makes use of the theory of the core. With respect to previous work, our positive implementation result applies to a substantially larger class of economies: the model relaxes differentiability and convexity of preferences, and also admits an arbitrary number of divisible and indivisible goods.     

Delegation and Threat in Bargaining

Two principals (“nations”) appoint one agent each to bargain over the provision of a public good. Two institutional set-ups are studied, each with a different level of authority given to the agents. Here authority means the right to decide the own side's provision if negotiations break down. In equilibrium the principals choose agents with preferences differing from their own. The low-authority equilibrium Pareto dominates (with regard to the principals) the case of the principals deciding on the provisions simultaneously (autarchy). The high-authority equilibrium is Pareto dominated by the low-authority equilibrium and it may even be dominated by autarchy.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C71, and C72.     

Bargaining and Sharing Innovative Knowledge

We consider the problem of bargaining over the disclosure of interimresearch knowledge between two participants in an R&D race for an ultimate,patentable invention. Licence fee schedules that are functions of the'amount of knowledge disclosed', by the leading to the laggingagent, are examined for their abilities to attain efficient outcomes andvarying shares of the surplus arising from disclosure. In hersequential-offers bargaining games, the uninformed buyer is able to elicitfull disclosures without sharing the incremental surplus with any type ofthe licensor, and thus do as well as a perfectly informed and discriminatingknowledge licensee.     

Moral Hazard and Bargaining Power

Abstract. We introduce bargaining power in a moral hazard framework where parties are risk-neutral and the agent is financially constrained. We show that the same contract emerges if the concept of bargaining power is analyzed in either of the following three frameworks: in a standard principal–agent (P–A) framework by varying the agent's outside opportunity, in an alternating offer game, and in a generalized Nash-bargaining game. However, for sufficiently low levels of the agent's bargaining power, increasing it marginally does affect the equilibrium in the Nash-bargaining game, but not in the P–A model and in the alternating offer game.