Formal versus informal legislative bargaining

First published online: 25 January 2016We study how the formality of a bargaining procedure affects its outcome. We compare a formal Baron–Ferejohn bargaining procedure to an informal procedure where players make and accept proposals in continuous time. Both constitute non-cooperative games corresponding to the same bargaining problem: a three-player median voter setting with an external disagreement point. This allows us to study formality in the presence and absence of a core and provides a natural explanation for the effects of preference polarization. Our results show that polarization hurts the median player and that formality matters. The median player is significantly better off under informal bargaining

MORAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN BARGAINING ∗

In many business transactions, in labor-management relations, in international conflicts, and welfare state reforms bargainers seem to hold strong entitlements that shape negotiations. Despite their importance, the role of entitlements in negotiations has not received much attention. We fill the gap by designing an experiment that allows us to measure the entitlements and to track them through the whole negotiation process. We find strong entitlement e#ects that shape opening o#ers, bargaining duration, concessions and reached (dis-)agreements. We argue that entitlements constitute a "moral property right" that is influential independent of negotiators' legal property rights