Self-Serving Biases in Bargaining

There is strong evidence that in bargaining situations with asymmetric outside options people exhibit self-serving biases concerning their fairness judgements. Moreover, psychological literature suggests that this can be a driving force of bargaining impasse. This paper extends the notion of inequity aversion to incorporate self-serving biases due to asymmetric outside options and analyses whether this leads to bargaining breakdown. I distinguish between sophisticated and naive agents, that is, those agents who understand their bias and those who do not. I find that breakdown in ultimatum bargaining results from naiveté of the proposers

Market Experience and willingness to trade: evidence from repeated markets with symmetric and asymmetric information

Many studies have found a gap between willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept that is inconsistent with standard theory. There is also evidence that the gap is eroded by experience gained in the laboratory and naturally occurring markets. This paper argues that the gap and the effects of experience are explained by a caution heuristic. This conjecture is tested in a repeated market experiment with symmetric and asymmetric information. The results support the conjecture: people do seem to use heuristics rather than reacting optimally and their behavior adjusts slowly when the environment changes.WTA/WTP disparity, endowment effect, market experience, bounded rationality, asymmetric information

North-South knowledge spillovers and competition: Convergence versus divergence

Technology;International Relations;Research and Development;Knowledge