Most models of labor markets and (un)employment neglect how competition among firms or sectors of the economy affects their hiring of workers and working times. Our approach pays special attention to such effects by proposing a complex stage game where firms invest in capital equipment before...

We present an experiment where two players bargain with a third player. They can bargain either separately or form a joint venture to bargain collectively. Our theoretical benchmark solution predicts decentralized bargaining, as only one player has an interest in forming a joint venture....

Starting point of our (indirect) evolutionary analysis is the sequential bargaining model of Manning (1987) who distinguishes between trade union's power in initial wage and in later employment negotiations. By linking two such collective bargaining situations we can say which of the two...

Rational bargaining behavior depends crucially on the rules of bargaining, especially on whether parties decide sequentially or independently. Whereas in ultimatum bargaining the proposer can exploit the responder, independent commitments result in more balanced payoffs. To limit the scope of...

The evolution of trustworthiness as a major aspect of business ethics depends crucially on whether it can be signaled. If this is impossible, only opportunistic traders will survive. Whereas previous studies have analysed detection agencies (Güth and Kliemt, 1994 and 1998) or have substituted...

If one abstracts from specially organized markets like stock or commodity exchanges, (international) trade relies on bargaining between the interested parties. Whereas earlier the results of bargaining were seen as unpredictable or determined by an at most vaguely defined concept of (relative)...

The general framework of decision emergence (Güth, 2000a) is applied to the specific decision task of a proposer in ultimatum bargaining, i.e. to choosing how much the responder should be offered. For this purpose the "Master Module" as well as its submodules "New Problem Solver", "Adaptation...

Whereas orthodox game theory relies on the unrealistic assumption of (commonly known) perfect rationality, participants in game playing experiments are at best boundedly rational. This makes it necessary to supplement orthodox game theory by a behavioral theory of game playing. We first point...

Robust learning experiments confront participants with structurally different decision environments which they encounter, furthermore, repeatedly. Since the decision format does not depend on the rules (of game), forward looking deliberation (the shadow of the future) can be detected by...

The findings on the ultimatum game are considered as belonging to the most robust experimental results. In this paper we present a slightly altered version of the mini ultimatum game of Bolton and Zwick (1995). Whereas in the latter exactly equal splits were feasible in our games these were...