Systematic experiments with distribution games (for a survey, see Roth, 1995) have shown that participants are strongly motivated by fairness and efficiency considerations. This evidence, however, results mainly from experimental designs asking directly for sharing monetary rewards. But even...

The variable threat-bargaining model of Nash (1953) assumes that threats in the sense of binding commitments as to what one will do if bargaining ends in conflict, are chosen before bargaining. By comparision, late threats to be chosen after bargaining end in conflict, appear more natural and...

Two firms, firm A in country A and firm B in country B, compete in hiring two types of workers. Type 1-workers would be less productive when working abroad whereas type 2-workers are equally productive when working abroad or at home. Employers compete by offering employment contracts for both...

On an otherwise symmetric oligopoly market with stochastic demands for heterogeneous products firms can either hire an employee or partner or buy the required labor input on the labor market. Whereas the wage of hired labor does not depend in the realization of stochastic demand, the price of...

Two firms, each consisting of a team with the owner and just one employee, compete on the labor market with free labor mobility. After observing the investment decisions by firm owners their employees can engage in costly training, thus increasing their general and firm-specific productivity,...

To commit credibly in bargaining is crucial: In the ultimatum game with its one-sided early commitment power the “proposer” gets (nearly) the whole pie while the “responder” is left with (almost) nothing. When both parties commit simultaneously the (a)symmetric Nash(1950)-bargaining...

This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of "optimality" rule out "purposeful" rational choice by assuming zero-intelligence and pure rational choice explanations leave no room for...

In this paper we consider conventions as regularities in behavior which help to solve coordination problems in a society. These problems can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several equilibria. We know that in such situations serious problems of equilibrium selection arise which...

In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirations expressing how much they want to earn given their expectations about the other's behavior. We define individually and mutually satisficing sales behavior for given individual beliefs and aspiration profiles. In a first...