fairness and efficiency in a subjective claims problem abstract in a subjective claims problem agents have conflicting perceptions on what constitutes a fair division of a jointly produced cake in a large scale experimental study involving a three agent subjective claims problem we compare the performance of four mechanisms which use agents reports on fair shares as input and yield a division of the cake or less as output the mechanisms differ with respect to the desirable properties they possess and they are compared in terms of efficiency and perceived allocative and procedural fairness successful in terms of both fairness and efficiency are two mechanisms that explicitly ask for an assessment of the partners fair shares and that do not induce agents to exaggerate their assessment of the own fair share one of the two successful mechanisms does not ask for an assessment of the own fair share while the other punishes overly selfish own claims

contractual responses to the common pool prorationing of crude oil production this paper examines bargaining among firms to mitigate rent dissipation following the major oil discoveries of 1926 35 because of high bargaining costs firms chose prorationing instead of consolidation and unitization and success varied the analysis also shows that prorationing took the form it did because concession such as per well quotas were required to draw in small operations and the quotas led to predictable responses regarding rent dissipation prorationing despite its costs controlled total field production and costs conserved natural reservoir energies and lengthened field life when private agreements failed the parties successfully appealed for state enforcement since similar heterogeneities influnce regulations elsewhere in the economy detailed analysis of bargaining among firms is essential for insight into the emergence of various institutional forms 33 references 3 tables

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

international research networks in pharmaceuticals structure and dynamics abstract knowledge production and scientific research have become increasingly more collaborative and international particularly in pharmaceuticals we analyze this tendency in general and tie formation in international research networks on the country level in particular based on a unique dataset of scientific publications related to pharmaceutical research and applying social network analysis we find that both the number of countries and their connectivity increase in almost all disease group specific networks the cores of the networks consist of high income oecd countries and remain rather stable over time using network regression techniques to analyze the network dynamics our results indicate that accumulative advantages based on connectedness and multi connectivity are positively related to changes in the countries collaboration intensity whereas various indicators on similarity between countries do not allow for unambiguous conclusions

national systems of biotechnology innovation complex interdependence in the global system this paper explores the relationship between national institutional context and the development of biotechnology in the united states united kingdom japan and germany national patterns in biotechnology r d are linked to the configuration of county specific institutional features into a system of innovation which supports or impedes the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge between the scientific and industrial communities building on this comparative analysis it is argued that the particular characteristics of national systems of biotechnology innovation form the basis for complex interdependence within the global system through international technological cooperation and the cross border adoption and adaptation of institutional forms and practices implications for national technological advantage and the stability of national institutional systems are discussed

the origins and dynamics of production networks in silicon valley abstract computer systems firms in silicon valley are responding to rising costs of product development shorter product cycles and rapid technological change by focusing and building partnerships with suppliers both within and outside of the region well known firms like hewlett packard and apple computers and lesser known ones like silicon graphics and pyramid technology are organized to combine the components and sub systems made by specialist suppliers into new computer systems as these firms collaborate to both define and manufacture new systems they are institutionalizing their capacity to learn from one another three cases a contract manufacturer a silicon foundry and the joint development of a microprocessor illustrate how inter firm networks help account for the sustained technological dynamism of the regional economy

an empirical approach to distributive justice abstract this paper starts from the idea that it would be interesting to complement the deductive reasoning about economic justice with an empirical approach which tries to describe and interpret the actual value judgements held by the economic agents we present results from a pilot study with 180 subjects factor analysis indicates that it makes sense to work with desert and compensation criteria as most economists and philosophers do we then illustrate that it is possible to operationalise equity judgements estimating for each subject separately an equation describing his perception of the equitable compensatory income variation we use the factor analysis results to construct a compensation and a desert index all coefficients can be nicely interpreted and interesting patterns of interindividual variation emerge

distributive justice theoretical foundations and empirical findings abstract the first part of this paper discusses various theories of distributive justice such as utilitarianism rawlsianism approaches within cooperative bargaining theory and the notion of fair allocations the focus is on the different informational bases used in these solution concepts the second part reports some results from empirical investigations where a particular distributive problem had to be solved by undergraduate students of economics and business administration the question we are posing is whether the respondents behaviour can to some extent at least be rationalized in terms of utilitarian ethics

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

an experimental study of the holdout problem in a multilateral bargaining game abstract when an economic exchange requires agreement by multiple independent parties the potential exists for an individual to strategically delay agreement in an attempt to capture a greater share of the surplus created by the exchange this holdout problem is a common feature of the land assembly literature because development frequently requires the assembly of multiple parcels of land we use experimental methods to examine holdout behavior in a laboratory bargaining game that involves multi person groups complementary exchanges and holdout externalities the results of six treatments that vary the bargaining institution number of bargaining periods and the cost of delay demonstrate that holdout is common across institutions and is on average a payoff improving strategy for responders both proposers and responders take a more aggressive initial bargaining stance in multi period bargaining treatments relative to single period treatments but take a less aggressive bargaining stance when delay is costly nearly all exchanges eventually occur in our multi period treatments leading to higher overall efficiency relative to the single period treatments both with and without delay costs

inflation tax rules and investment some econometric evidence this paper presents econometric evidence on the effect of tax incentives on business investment in the united states in the period from 1953 through1978 the analysis emphasizes that the interaction of inflation and existing tax rules has contributed substantially to the decline of business investment since the late 1960 s because the investment process is far too complex for any simple econometric model to be convincing i have estimated three quite different models of investment behavior the strength of the empirical evidence rests on the fact that all three specifications support the same conclusion more generally the analysis and evidence show that theoretical models of macroeconomic equilibrium should specify explicitly the role of distortionary taxes especially taxes on capital income the failure to include such tax rules can have dramatic and misleading effects on the qualitative as well as the quantitative properties of macroeconomic theories this paper was presented as the fisher shultz lecture at the fourth world congress of the econometric society 29 august 1980 in aix en province this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

moral hypocrisy power and social preferences abstract we study how individuals adjust their judgment of fairness and unfairness when they are in the position of spectators before and after making real decisions and how this adjustment depends on the actions they take in the game we find that norms that appear universal instead take into account the players bargaining power also individuals adjust their judgments after playing the game for real money when they behaved more selfishly and only in games where choices have no strategic consequence we interpret this possibly self deceptive adjustment of judgments to actions as moral hypocrisy this behavior appears produced by the attempt to strike a compromise between self image and payoffs so as to release oneself of one s responsibility for selfish behavior

non cooperative bargaining theory an introduction the paper provides an informal introduction to some of the main themes of the recent literature on non cooperative or sequential bargaining models it focuses in particular on the relationship between the new approach and the traditional axiomatic approach exemplified by nash bargaining theory it illustrates the new insights offered by the non cooperative approach by reference to a detailed analysis of the manner in which the presence of an outside option available to one of the parties will affect the negotiated outcome finally the difficulties which arise in extending this analysis to two person bargaining with incomplete information and to n person bargaining are discussed this is a revised version of the fourth review of economic studies lecture presented in april 1985 at the joint meeting of the association of university teachers of economics and the royal economic society held in oxford the choice of lecturer is made by a panel whose members are currently professors hahn mirrlees and nobay and the paper is refereed in the usual way this paper aims to provide an informal and elementary introduction to an approach to bargaining which has received a great deal of attention over the past few years the approach involves writing down some particular sequence of moves offers and replies to be made over time in the course of negotiations and then looking for a non cooperative equilibrium in the game thus specified in practice a perfect equilibrium or in games of incomplete information a sequential equilibrium while the approach appears at first sight to be very different in spirit from the traditional axiomatic approach in which a bargaining solution is specified by appealing to a number of general requirements which are deemed appropriate on the basis of some a priori considerations the two approaches are in fact complementary while the

choosing the wrong pond social comparisons in negotiations that reflect a self serving bias we explore the role that choice of comparison groups plays in explaining impasse in teacher contract negotiations we hypothesize that the negotiators select comparable districts in a biased fashion such that teachers salaries in districts that unions view as comparable are higher than teachers salaries in districts that school boards view as comparable we also predict that strike activity is positively related to the difference in the salary levels of the unions and boards lists of comparables we test these predictions using a unique combination of subjective survey and field data on teacher contract negotiations in pennsylvania both hypotheses are supported by the data

automobile safety inspection further econometric evidence 1990 automobile safety inspection further econometric evidence applied economics vol 22 no 12 pp 1697 1704

new concepts and trends in international r d organization abstract the globalization of markets the regionalization of technical and scientific expertise and the rapid change in technologies are forcing technology based companies to continuously adjust their r d organization our study of 33 companies reveals five different types of r d organization in multinational companies mnc we classified r d organizations according to the dispersion of r d activities and the degree of cooperation between individual r d units and identified the ethnocentric centralized the geocentric centralized the polycentric decentralized the r d hub and the integrated r d network organization five trends of organizational change among these forms of international r d organization were identified 1 stronger orientation of r d activities towards international markets and knowledge centers 2 establishment of tightly coordinated listening posts 3 strengthening and reinforcement of foreign r d sites 4 increased integration of decentralized r d units and 5 tighter coordination and recentralization of r d activities at fewer know how centers the search for the optimal balance between coordination and control is reflected by hybrid structures and intermediary configurations detected in some of the investigated companies since effective changes in behavioral orientation require considerable time successful quantum leaps in multinational r d organization are next to impossible

delay in multilateral bargaining under complete information abstract this paper analyzes a complete information infinite horizon multilateral bargaining model in which one player bargains with each of the other players one at a time and binding cash offer contracts are used to govern transactions under a weak stationarity condition on equilibrium strategies we characterize the set of equilibria for the game we show that when players are sufficiently patient significant delay in reaching agreements may emerge and this delay can become longer quickly as the number of involved parties rises indeed when the number of bargainers is large perpetual disagreement can occur in equilibrium journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d23 d62

demand competition and policy compromise in legislative bargaining i propose a new majoritarian bargaining model in which more than one implicit proposal can be on the table at the same time institutional differences from system to system affect the order of play the equilibrium majorities and the policy outcome the ex post distribution of payoffs within a winning coalition is however invariant to fundamental institutional differences and it is always proportional to the distribution of relative ex ante bargaining power the bargaining process is modeled as a sequential demand game in which players are called to propose a policy and to specify their desired share of the private benefits related to being in office the order of play is endogenous and the distribution of payoffs within an equilibrium majority usually does not depend on who is the proposal maker the role of the head of state and the advantages to center parties are also studied

measurement of income inequality experimental test by questionnaire abstract we reconsider some of the basic assumptions of the literature on inequality analysis students views on the meaning of inequality comparisons were elicited by means of a questionnaire involving both numerical and verbal questions the responses suggest that two important axioms the principle of transfers and decomposability are not universally accepted