The labor economics literature has shown that the "efficient bargaining" model, in which wage and employment are negotiated simultaneously, is less frequently used on unionized markets than the less efficient "right-to-manage" model, in which wage is determined via bargaining and employment...

We experimentally investigate multiple notions of equity in ultimatum bargaining with asymmetric outside options. Building on the generalized equity principle formulated by Selten (1978), we derive three different equity rules that can explain 43% of all offers. Our within-subject design further...

In his classic article "An Essay on Bargaining" Schelling (1956) argues that ignorance might actually be strength rather than weakness. We test and confirm Schelling's conjecture in a simple take-it-or-leave bargaining experiment where the proposer can choose between two possible offers. Option...

We report the results of a field experiment with bicycle messengers in Switzerland and the United States. Messenger work is individualized enough that firms can choose to condition pay on it, but significant externalities in messenger behavior nonetheless give their on-the-job interactions the...

We conduct multi-person one-shot ultimatum games that reflect important aspects of collective bargaining. In all treatments a proposer has to divide a pie among herself and two groups of three recipients each. She cannot discriminate within, but across groups. A committee with representatives...

The "joint costs" model states that the incentive to strike is inversely related to the total costs associated with workers' and firms' strike activities. Not only has this model been tested with mixed results, but also the joint costs model is problematic in explaining several stylized facts in...

Despite recent advances, no general methods for computing bargaining power in non-cooperative games exist. We propose a number of axioms such a measure should satisfy and show that they characterise a unique function. The principle underlying this measure is that the influence of a player can be...

We develop a model of the household in which spousal incomes are determined by pre-marital investments, the marriage market is characterized by assortative matching, and endogenously-determined sharing rules form the basis of intra-household allocations. By incorporating pre-marital investments...

Can households make efficient choices? The fact that cohabitation and marriage are partnerships for joint production and consumption imply that their gains are highest when household members cooperate. At the same time, empirical findings suggest that spousal specialization and labor force...

We model monopsony on the labor market using a separable matching model a la Choo and Siow (2006). We propose a simple method that estimates 1) the multidimensional determinants of productivity and non-wage preferences separately and 2) the variance of unobserved heterogeneity on both sides of...