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 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...

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...

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...

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 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 investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse foruniversity admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists ofthree procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren","Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting...

In this article, we use a stylized model of the labor market to investigate the effects of three alternative and well-known bargaining solutions. We apply the Nash, the Egalitarian and the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solutions in the small firm's matching model of unemployment. To the best of...

The paper provides a theoretical foundation for the empirical regularities observed in estimations of wage consequences of overeducation and undereducation. Workers with more education than required for their jobs are observed to suffer wage penalties relative to workers with the same education...

In the context of the Beckerian theory of marriage, when men and women match on a single-dimensional index that is the weighted sum of their respective multivariate attributes, many papers in the literature have used linear canonical correlation, and related techniques, in order to estimate...