Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Market Design (106)
- Auctions (103)
- Telecommunications (45)
- Electricity and Gas (44)
- Sudan (38)
-
- The Impacts of Social Justice and Income Distribution in Sudan (28)
- Natural Resources (24)
- Bargaining (20)
- Environmental Markets (20)
- Collusion (16)
- Industrial Organization (16)
- Labor (10)
- Social Entrepreneurship (10)
- Finance (9)
- Impacts of Macroeconomic Policies on the Economic Sectors (9)
- Economic Performance (8)
- Co-operative Entrepreneurship (7)
- Economics (5)
- Experimental Economics (5)
- Institutions (5)
- Jurisprudence (5)
- Law and Society (5)
- Major Works (5)
- Mechanism Design (5)
- Politics (5)
- Poverty (5)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (5)
- Secession (5)
- Social Economy (5)
- Economics of Water Use (4)
- Publication Year
Articles 211 - 223 of 223
Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics
Wage Bargaining With Time-Varying Threats, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
Wage Bargaining With Time-Varying Threats, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
Peter Cramton
We study wage bargaining in which the union is uncertain about the firm's willingness to pay and threat payoffs vary over time. Strike payoffs change over time as replacement workers are hired, as strikers find temporary jobs, and as inventories or strike funds run out. We find that bargaining outcomes are substantially altered if threat payoffs vary. If dispute costs increase in the long-run, then dispute durations are longer, settlement rates are lower, and wages decline more slowly during the short-run (and may even increase). The settlement wage is largely determined from the long-run threat, rather than the short-run threat.
The Determinants Of U.S. Labor Disputes, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
The Determinants Of U.S. Labor Disputes, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
Peter Cramton
We present a bargaining model of union contract negotiations, in which the union decides between two threats: the union can strike or continue to work under the expired contract. The model makes predictions about the level of dispute activity and the form the disputes take. Strike incidence increases as the strike threat becomes more attractive, because of low unemployment or a real wage drop during the prior contract. We test these predictions by estimating logistic models of dispute incidence and dispute composition for U.S. labor contract negotiations from 1970 to 1989. We find empirical support for the model's key predictions, …
Relational Investing And Agency Theory, Peter Cramton, Ian Ayres
Relational Investing And Agency Theory, Peter Cramton, Ian Ayres
Peter Cramton
This Article analyzes how, and when, corporate governance could be improved by utilizing "relational investing." The term relational investing is just coming into vogue and there does not yet seem to be a consensus on what it means. Although the term has been trumpeted on the cover of Business Week, before the Conference on Relational Investing at Columbia University, relatively little legal writing had been published on the subject. For the purposes of this Article, we define relational investing to encompass commitments to buy and hold significant blocks of a corporation's stock. And it is particularly important that the relational …
Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz
Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …
Promoting Honesty In Negotiation: An Exercise In Practical Ethics, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees
Promoting Honesty In Negotiation: An Exercise In Practical Ethics, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees
Peter Cramton
In a competitive and morally imperfect world, business people are often faced with serious ethical challenges. Harboring suspicions about the ethics of others, many feel justified in engaging in less-than-ideal conduct to protect their own interests. The most sophisticated moral arguments are unlikely to counteract this behavior. We believe that this morally defensive behavior is responsible, in large part, for much undesirable deception in negotiation. Drawing on recent work in the literature of negotiations, we present some practical guidance on how negotiators might build trust, establish common interests, and secure credibility for their statements thereby promoting honesty We also point …
Strikes And Holdouts In Wage Bargaining: Theory And Data, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
Strikes And Holdouts In Wage Bargaining: Theory And Data, Peter Cramton, Joseph Tracy
Peter Cramton
We develop a private-information model of union contract negotiations in which disputes signal a firm’s willingness to pay. Previous models have assumed that all labor disputes take the form of a strike. Yet a prominent feature of U.S. collective bargaining is the holdout: negotiations often continue without a strike after the contract has expired. Production continues with workers paid according to the expired contract. We analyze the union’s decision to strike or hold out and highlight its importance to strike activity. Strikes are more likely to occur after a drop in the real wage or a decline in unemployment.
Strategic Delay In Bargaining With Two-Sided Uncertainty, Peter Cramton
Strategic Delay In Bargaining With Two-Sided Uncertainty, Peter Cramton
Peter Cramton
The role of strategic delay is analyzed in an infinite-horizon alternating-offer model of bargaining. A buyer and seller are engaged in the trade of a single object. Both bargainers have private information about their own preferences and are impatient in that delaying agreement is costly. An equilibrium is constructed in which the bargainers signal the strength of their bargaining positions by delaying prior to making an offer. A bargainer expecting large gains from trade is more impatient than one expecting small gains, and hence makes concessions earlier on. Trade occurs whenever gains from trade exist, but due to the private …
Dynamic Bargaining With Transaction Costs, Peter Cramton
Dynamic Bargaining With Transaction Costs, Peter Cramton
Peter Cramton
A buyer and seller alternate making offers until an offer is accepted or someone terminates negotiations. The seller's valuation is common knowledge, but the buyer's valuation is known only by the buyer. Impatience to reach an agreement comes from two sources: the traders discount future payoffs and there are transaction costs of bargaining. Equilibrium behavior involves either immediate trade, delayed trade, or immediate termination, depending on the size of the gains from trade and the relative bargaining costs. This contrasts with the pure discounting model where termination never occurs, and the pure transaction cost model where delayed trade never occurs.
Shrewd Bargaining On The Moral Frontier: Toward A Theory Of Morality In Practice, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees
Shrewd Bargaining On The Moral Frontier: Toward A Theory Of Morality In Practice, Peter Cramton, J Gregory Dees
Peter Cramton
From a traditional moral point of view, business practitioners often seem overly concerned about the behavior of their peers in deciding how they ought to act. We propose to account for this concern by introducing a mutual trust perspective, where moral obligations are grounded in a sense of trust that others will abide by the same rules. When grounds for trust are absent, the obligation is weakened. We illustrate this perspective by examining the widespread ambivalence with regard to deception about one’s settlement preferences in negotiation. On an abstract level, such deception generally seems undesirable, though in many individual cases …
Cartel Enforcement With Uncertainty About Costs, Peter Cramton, Thomas R. Palfrey
Cartel Enforcement With Uncertainty About Costs, Peter Cramton, Thomas R. Palfrey
Peter Cramton
What cartel agreements are possible when firms have private information about production costs? For private cost uncertainty we characterize the set of cartel agreements that can be supported, recognizing incentive and participation constraints. If defection results in either Cournot or Bertrand competition, the incentive problem in large cartels is severe enough to prevent the cartel from achieving the monopoly outcome. However, if the cartel agreement requires less than unanimous ratification by the member firms, then the incentive problem can be overcome in large cartels. With common cost uncertainty, perfect collusion is possible in large cartels, regardless of the ratification rule.
Dissolving A Partnership Efficiently, Peter Cramton, Robert Gibbons, Paul Klemperer
Dissolving A Partnership Efficiently, Peter Cramton, Robert Gibbons, Paul Klemperer
Peter Cramton
Several partners jointly own an asset that may be traded among them. Each partner has a valuation for the asset; the valuations are known privately and drawn independently from a common probability distribution. We characterize the set of all incentive-compatible and interim-individually-rational trading mechanisms, and give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for such mechanisms to dissolve the partnership ex post efficiently. A bidding game is constructed that achieves such dissolution whenever it is possible. Despite incomplete information about the valuation of the asset, a partnership can be dissolved ex post efficiently provided no single partner owns too large a …
Sequential Bargaining Mechanisms, Peter Cramton
Sequential Bargaining Mechanisms, Peter Cramton
Peter Cramton
The introductory discussion presented in this chapter considers the simplest type of sequential bargaining games in which the players’ time preferences are described by known and fixed discount rates. I begin by characterizing the class of perfect bargaining mechanisms, which satisfy the desirable properties of incentive compatibility (i.e., each player reports his type truthfully), individual rationality (i.e., every potential player wishes to play the game), and sequential rationality (i.e., it is never common knowledge that the mechanism induced over time is dominated by an alternative mechanism). It is shown that ex post efficiency is unobtainable by any incentive-compatible and individually …
Bargaining With Incomplete Information: An Infinite-Horizon Model With Two-Sided Uncertainty, Peter Cramton
Bargaining With Incomplete Information: An Infinite-Horizon Model With Two-Sided Uncertainty, Peter Cramton
Peter Cramton
The resolution of any bargaining conflict depends crucially on the relative urgency of the agents to reach agreement and the information each agent has about the others’ preferences. This paper explores, within the context of an infinite-horizon bargaining model with two-sided uncertainty, how timing and information affect the rational behavior of agents when commitment is not possible. Since the bargainers are uncertain about whether trade is desirable, they must communicate some of their private information before an agreement can be reached. This need for learning, due to incomplete information about preferences, results in bargaining inefficiencies: trade often occurs after costly …