Robustness of intermediate agreements and bargaining solutions

Abstract

Most real-life bargaining is resolved gradually. During this process parties reach intermediate agreements. These intermediate agreements serve as disagreement points in subsequent rounds. We identify robustness criteria which are satisfied by three prominent bargaining solutions, the Nash, Proportional (and as a special case to the Egalitarian solution) and Discrete Raiffa solutions. We show that the “robustness of intermediate agreements” plus additional well-known and plausible axioms, provide novel axiomatizations of the above-mentioned solutions. Hence, we provide a unified framework for comparing these solutionsʼ bargaining theories.