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Bundles Of Hope: Putting Aspirations In Order, Marc A. Morgan

Marc A. Morgan

The primary purpose of this paper is to discuss cardinal utility theories of how aspiration affects negotiation and to propose an alternative ordinal utility theory of how aspiration affects negotiation. In the cardinal utility theories, used by some legal scholars, aspiration in negotiation is a utility maximizing point after which negotiators become increasingly loss averse. While in the ordinal utility theory this paper proposes, aspiration in negotiation is a goal that maximizes utility subject to constraints and subjective preferences.