This paper argues that the notion of focal points is important in understanding bargaining processes. Recent literature confines a discussion of the usefulness of the notion to coordination problems and when bargaining experiments result in outcomes that are inconsistent with a straightforward...

We study a bargaining model with a disagreement game between offers and counteroffers. In order to characterize the set of its subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs, we provide a recursive technique that relies on the Pareto frontier of equilibrium payoffs. When players have different time...

In many business transactions, in labor-management relations, in internationalconflicts, and welfare state reforms bargainers hold strong entitlements that are oftengenerated by claims that are not feasible any more. These entitlements seem to considerablyshape negotiation behavior. By using the...

The Nash bargaining solution of a modified bargaining problem in the contract space yields the pair of stationary subgame perfect equilibrium proposals in the alternating offers model, also for positive time between proposals. As time vanishes, convergence to the Nash bargaining solution is...

The bargaining model with stochastic order of proposing players is properly embedded in continuous time and it is strategically equivalent to the alternating offers model. For all parameter values, the pair of equilibrium proposals corresponds to the Nash bargaining solution of a modified...

There has been a long debate on equilibrium characterization in the negotiation model when players have different time preferences. We show that players behave quite differently under different time preferences than under common time preferences. Conventional analysis in this literature relies...