Formal versus informal legislative bargaining

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ruiz, Adrian de Groot; Ramer, Roald; Schram, Arthur
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam; University of Amsterdam; European University Institute
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.01.004
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1-17
• 关键词: Legislative bargaining; Formal bargaining; Informal bargaining; polarization; median voter; core; uncovered set; experiment

摘要

We 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. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.