Group buying enables collective bargaining opportunity that individual buyers lack to negotiate prices with sellers. This potential negotiation capability has two opposing effects. On the one hand, the prospect of the group being able to negotiate price with its rival forces each seller to lower...

The paper presents a simulation of the dynamics of impersonal trust. It shows how a 'trust/reciprocation' norm can emerge and stabilize in populations of conditional cooperators. The norm, or behavioral regularity, is not to be identified with a single strategy. It is instead supported by...

This paper analyzes fairness and bargaining in a dynamic bilateral matching market. Traders from both sides of the market are pairwise matched to share the gains from trade. The bargaining outcome depends on the traders’ fairness attitudes. In equilibrium fairness matters because of market...

Entitlement programs have become an increasing component of total government spending in the US over the last six decades. To some observers, this growth of the welfare state is excessive and unwarranted. To others, it is a welcome counter-acting force to the rapid increase in income inequality....

This paper analyzes fairness and bargaining in a dynamic bilateral matching market. Traders from both sides of the market are pairwise matched to share the gains from trade. The bargaining outcome depends on the traders’ fairness attitudes. In equilibrium fairness matters because of market...

I study intermediation in a buyer-seller network with sequential bargaining. An intermediary matches traders connected in a network to bargain over the price of heterogeneous goods and has the freedom to charge each side commission. A profit-maximizing middleman can help eliminate trading delays...

We study an infinite horizon game in which pairs of players connected in a network are randomly matched to bargain over a unit surplus. Players who reach agreement are removed from the network without replacement. The global logic of efficient matchings and the local nature of bargaining, in...

Prior research on "strategic voting" has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, i.e.,...

We examine the legislative game with open rules proposed by Baron and Ferejohn (1989). We first show that the three-group equilibrium suggested by Baron and Ferejohn does not always obtain. Second, we characterize the set of stationary equilibria for simple and super majority rules. Such...

We experimentally study behavior in a finitely repeated coalition formation game played in real time. Subjects interact in groups of three, bargaining over the distribution of payments which occur at regular time intervals. During a given interval, payments occur if and only if a majority is in...