Sociological versus strategic factors in bargaining

Most game-theoretic models of strategic interaction, indeed most economic models of any sort, specify potential outcomes entirely in terms of the preferences of the agents, as captured in their (possibly cardinal) utility functions. The underlying assumption is that the outcome of such interactions is determined entirely by these preferences, together with the strategic possibilities available to the agents. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the adequacy of this assumption in general, by investigating it in the specific context of two-person bargaining. In particular, we consider whether certain experimental results reported earlier can be accounted for strictly in terms of players' preferences and strategic possibilities, and we report a new experimental study designed to answer this question. The results strongly support the conclusion that sociological factors, unrelated to what we normally consider to be the ‘economic’ parameters of a game, can decisively influence the outcome of bargaining, in a systematic manner.     

Ulteriori contributi a un problema di Leo Moser

Si dimostrano condizioni necessarie e sufficienti relative a punti di Kuhn-Tucker per il «problema dei dadi truccati» e viene proposto un algoritmo per la ricerca di tali punti, tramite una successione di programmi lineari.

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The author's version of the «loaded dice problem» asks for x₁ to be maximum subject tox0 andx ^T H _i x1, whereH _i is the Hankel matrix of the (2n–1)-dimensional unity vectore ⁱ (i=1,..., 2n–1).Proofs are given here about necessary and sufficient conditions for Kuhn-Tucker points, together with an algorithm for finding them by means of a sequence of linear programs.