Game Theoretic Models Of Bargaining

This book provides a comprehensive picture of the new developments in bargaining theory.

Many social or economic conflict situations can be modeled by specifying the alternatives on which the involved parties may agree, and a special alternative which summarizes what happens in the event that no agreement is reached. Such a model is called a bargaining game, and a prescription assigning an alternative to each bargaining game is called a bargaining solution. In the cooperative game-theoretical approach, bargaining solutions are mathematically characterized by desirable properties, usually called axioms. In the noncooperative approach, solutions are derived as equilibria of strategic models describing an underlying bargaining procedure. Axiomatic Bargaining Game Theory provides the reader with an up-to-date survey of cooperative, axiomatic models of bargaining, starting with Nash's seminal paper, The Bargaining Problem. It presents an overview of the main results in this area during the past four decades. Axiomatic Bargaining Game Theory provides a chapter on noncooperative models of bargaining, in particular on those models leading to bargaining solutions that also result from the axiomatic approach. The main existing axiomatizations of solutions for coalitional bargaining games are included, as well as an auxiliary chapter on the relevant demands from utility theory.

The four volumes of Game Equilibrium Models present applications of non-cooperative game theory. Problems of strategic interaction arising in biology, economics, political science and the social sciences in general are treated in 42 papers on a wide variety of subjects. Internationally known authors with backgrounds in various disciplines have contributed original research. The reader finds innovative modelling combined with advanced methods of analysis. The four volumes are the outcome of a research year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Bielefeld. The close interaction of an international interdisciplinary group of researchers has produced an unusual collection of remarkable results of great interest for everybody who wants to be informed on the scope, potential, and future direction of work in applied game theory. Volume III Strategic Bargaining contains ten papers on game equilibrium models of bargaining. All these contributions look at bargaining situations as non-cooperative games. General models of two-person and n-person bargaining are explored.

"This volume brings together all of Ken Binmore's influential experimental papers on bargaining along with newly written commentary in which Binmore discusses the underlying game theory and addresses the criticism leveled at it by behavioral economists."--BOOK JACKET.

The game-theoretic modelling of negotiations has been an active research area for the past five decades, that started with the seminal work by Nobel laureate John Nash in the early 1950s. This book provides a survey of some of the major developments in the field of strategic bargaining models with an emphasize on the role of threats in the negotiation process. Threats are all actions outside the negotiation room that negotiators have ate their disposal and the use of these actions affect the bargaining position of all negotiators. Of course, each negotiator aims to strengthen his own position. Examples of threats are the announcement of a strike by a union in centralized wage bargaining, or a nation’s announcement of a trade war directed against other nations in negotiations for trade liberalization. This book is organized on the basis of a simple guiding principle: The situation in which none of the parties involved in the negotiations has threats at its disposal is the natural benchmark for negotiations where the parties can make threats. Also on the technical level, negotiations with variable threats build on and extend the techniques applied in analyzing bargaining situations without threats. The first part of this book, containing chapter 3-6, presents the no-threat case, and the second part, containing chapter 7-10, extends the analysis for negotiation situations where threats are present. A consistent and unifying framework is provided first in 2.

Graduate textbook presenting abstract models of bargaining in a unified framework with detailed applications involving economic, political and social situations.