Efficient Bargaining Research Articles

Long-Term Care and Lazy Rotten Kids

This paper studies the determination of informal long-term care (family aid) to dependent elderly in a worst case scenario concerning the harmony of family relations. Children are purely selfish, and neither side can make credible commitments (which rules out efficient bargaining). The model is based on Becker's specification except that it explicitly accounts for the sequence of decisions. In Becker's world, with a single good, this setting yields efficiency.We show that when family aid (and long-term care services in general) are introduced, the outcome is likely to be inefficient. Still, the rotten kid mechanism is at work and ensures that a positive level of aid is provided as long as the bequest motive is operative. We identify the inefficiencies by comparing the laissez-faire (subgame perfect) equilibrium to the first-best allocation. We initially assume that families are identical ex ante. However, the case where dynasties differ in wealth is also considered. We study how the provision of long-term care (LTC) can be improved by public policies under various informational assumptions. Interestingly, crowding out of private aid by public LTC is not a problem in this setting. With an operative bequest motive, public LTC will have no impact on private aid. More amazingly still, when the bequest motive is (initially) not operative, public insurance may even enhance the provision of informal aid.

Efficient Wage Bargaining in a Dynamic Macroeconomic Model

This paper analyzes the implications of bilateral bargaining over wages and employment between a producer and a union representing a finite number of identical workers in a monetary macroeconomic model of the AS-AD type with government activity. Wages and aggregate employment levels are set according to an efficient (Nash) bargaining agreement while the commodity market is cleared in a competitive way. It is shown that, for each level of union power, measured by the share it obtains of the total production surplus, efficient bargaining implies no efficiency loss in production. Depending on the level of union power, temporary equilibria may exhibit voluntary overemployment or underemployment with the competitive equilibrium being a special case. Due to the price feedback from the commodity market and to income-induced demand effects, all temporary equilibria with a positive labor share are not Nash bargaining-efficient with respect to the set of feasible temporary equilibrium allocations. While higher union power induces a larger share of the surplus and a higher real wage, it always implies lower output and employment. Moreover, the induced nominal equilibrium wage is not always a monotonically increasing function of union power. Therefore, all temporary equilibria with efficient bargaining are only “Second-best” Pareto optimal, i.e., bargaining power and production efficiency do not lead to temporary optimality. The dynamic evolution of money balances, prices, and wages is analyzed being driven primarily by government budget deficits and expectations by consumers. It is shown that for each fixed level of union power, the features of the dynamics under perfect foresight are structurally identical to those of the same economy under competitive wage and price setting. These are: stationary equilibria with perfect foresight do not exist, except on a set of parameters of measure zero; balanced paths of monetary expansion or contraction are the only possibilities inducing constant allocations; for small levels of government demand, there exist two balanced paths generically, one of which with high employment and production is always unstable, while the other one may be stable or unstable.

Efficient bargaining versus right to manage: A stability analysis in a Cournot duopoly with trade unions

The present study considers a unionised (nonlinear) duopoly with two different labour market institutions, i.e. efficient bargaining (EB) and right to manage (RTM), to analyse product market stability under quantity competition with trade unions. We show that when the preference of unions towards wages is small, (i) the parametric stability region under RTM is higher than under EB, and (ii) a rise in the union power in the Nash bargaining played between firms and unions monotonically increases (resp. reduces) the parametric stability region under RTM (resp. EB). In contrast, when the preference of unions becomes larger, an increase in the union's bargaining power acts: (1) as an economic stabiliser when the union power is small; (2) as an economic de-stabiliser when the union power is high. In addition to established results with regard to equilibrium outcomes, our findings shed some light on the effects of how the labour market regulation affects out-of-equilibrium behaviours in a Cournot duopoly.

Law and Mechanism Design: Procedures to Induce Honest Bargaining

A classic challenge in contract and property law is unstructured negotiation between two parties with asymmetric information (i.e., each party has different private information) under bilateral monopoly (each party must negotiate with the other to try to reach an agreement), which often leads to prohibitively high transaction costs and, if the parties fail to agree, social costs as well. In these situations, the law should incorporate principles of mechanism design, a methodology that employs structured procedures to give the parties incentives to reach agreement. In terms of contract theory, mechanisms constitute algorithmic altering rules that reduce if not eliminate inefficient transaction costs. We review two bargaining mechanisms that inherently elicit honesty by making it a dominant strategy and discuss two extensions for legal applications. In particular, we show that algorithmic procedures would reduce transaction costs and lead to more efficient bargaining in pretrial settlement negotiations and blockholder disclosure under section 13(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The former is a straightforward application of mechanism design to a negotiation situation where the social externalities of non-agreement justify inducing the honest disclosure of reservation prices, or “bottom lines.” The latter is an example of using mechanism design to facilitate negotiated settlements in situations presently subject to a suboptimal mandatory rule.

Upstream uncertainty and countervailing power

We study vertical contracting through bargaining between an upstream supplier and downstream retailers. We consider the effect of supplier uncertainty as to final volumes on the efficient bargains struck. Uncertainty causes retail price effects: large buyers wield countervailing power (deliver lower retail prices) if upstream marginal costs are decreasing. If there were no upstream uncertainty, downstream retail prices would be independent of buyer size. With enough uncertainty large buyers have buyer power also (secure advantageous input prices). Downstream mergers, or organic growth of a downstream firm, change the uncertainty facing the upstream supplier and so result in “waterbed effects” on other buyers. We show that uncertainty for suppliers can be generated by upstream competition.

Dissolving (in)effective partnerships

This paper studies the problem of partnership dissolution in the context of asymmetric information. Past work shows that the initial share allocation, interdependence of partners’ valuations, and asymmetric control all affect the possibility of efficient dissolution. In this paper, I show, in a novel class of “cooperative” partnerships characterized by ex ante interdependence of valuations, that effectiveness is significantly more important than the initial share allocation. Intuitively, as the effectiveness of cooperation between partners (and thus partnership value) increases, the gains from dissolving decrease but the informational rents remain constant, so efficient dissolution is more difficult to achieve. For sufficiently high effectiveness, efficient dissolution is impossible for any initial share allocation. For sufficiently low effectiveness, however, efficient dissolution is possible for all initial share allocations. The possibility of efficient bargaining depends on the initial share allocation only for moderately effective partnerships.

Bargaining and the provision of health services

We model and compare the bargaining process between a purchaser of health services, such as a health authority, and a provider (the hospital) in three plausible scenarios: (a) activity bargaining: the purchaser sets the price and activity (number of patients treated) is bargained between the purchaser and the provider; (b) price bargaining: the price is bargained between the purchaser and the provider, but activity is chosen unilaterally by the provider; (c) efficient bargaining: price and activity are simultaneously bargained between the purchaser and the provider. We show that: (1) if the bargaining power of the purchaser is high (low), efficient bargaining leads to higher (lower) activity and purchaser's utility, and lower (higher) prices and provider's utility compared to price bargaining. (2) In activity bargaining, prices are lowest, the purchaser's utility is highest and the provider's utility is lowest; activity is generally lowest, but higher than in price bargaining for high bargaining power of the purchaser. (3) If the purchaser has higher bargaining power, this reduces prices and activity in price bargaining, it reduces prices but increases activity in activity bargaining, and it reduces prices but has no effect on activity in efficient bargaining.

The role of negotiation in the purchasing strategy aimed at creating value

Purchasing is increasingly becoming a strategic function, whose decisions are based on the philosophy and policy of value creation and the reduction of total costs in the supply chain. Long-term partnerships are built with suppliers. In the process, partners specialize in performing the activities of their core competences and strategic advantages. The purchasing departments include suppliers in development projects and product value analyses when solving logistics problems and other strategic tasks in order to achieve the best possible results. The goal is to lower the total costs of the value creation chain, starting from the sub-suppliers, through suppliers and their own company, to the end users, and to increase the benefits to the end consumer of goods or services. In today's hyper-competitive environment in which the struggle to win market space is becoming ever more aggressive and more dynamic and in which only those companies that have incorporated in their business environment a high level of flexibility, innovation and competitiveness, negotiation becomes a rounded business process and one of the crucial sources of competitive advantages. The strategic importance of the role of purchasing has made negotiation significantly a more complex and a more dynamic process that has a direct impact on the achievement of business results. The strategic importance of negotiation is reflected in its everyday use in governing and management of a company, which is becoming more dependent on teamwork, but also on the more emphasized role it plays in the inorganic strategies of growth by mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances with others. Strategic and systemic approach to the negotiation process offers the opportunity for the creation of new organizational capabilities where, by using different techniques and tools, the participants strive to maximize the value of each of the company's activities. By investing in an efficient bargaining system based on the ability and skill of the human capital, it is possible to achieve goals that lead to the creation of value and increase of the overall business results.

Do Unions Increase Labor's Shares? Evidence from US Industry-Level Data

We explore the relationship between union density and labor shares using panel data on 35 industries, spanning the entire US economy, for the years 1983 through 2005. For the full sample, a standard deviation increase in union membership rates is associated with an increase in an industry’s labor share of about 10%. Starting from the mean labor share in our sample (0.614) that amounts to about 6 percentage points. However, the effect is weaker and not statistically significant for manufacturing industries. We control for the capital-to-output ratio in all of our estimations and the results are consistent with an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor that is less than unity. As such, the positive union effect on labor share is consistent with either the right-to-manage or efficiency bargaining model of unions.

Markups, Bargaining Power and Offshoring: An Empirical Assessment1

AbstractThis paper tests the pro‐competitive effect of imports on product and labour markets for Spanish manufacturing firms in the period 1990–2005. In doing so, it takes into account the type of imported products: final versus intermediate. Markups are estimated following the procedure suggested by Roeger and including an efficient bargaining model. The observed heterogeneity among firms is parametised to consider additional product standardisation and market concentration. The results support the imports as market discipline hypothesis for importers of final goods, while firms that offshore intermediate inputs show similar markups to nonimporters. Additionally, the union bargaining power is smaller for importers and the more homogeneous is the type of goods elaborated by firms.

Panel data estimates of the production function and product and labor market imperfections

SUMMARYConsistent with two models of imperfect competition in the labor market—the efficient bargaining model and the monopsony model—we provide two extensions of a microeconomic version of Hall's framework for estimating price‐cost margins. We show that both product and labor market imperfections generate a wedge between factor elasticities in the production function and their corresponding shares in revenue, which can be characterized by a ‘joint market imperfections parameter’. Using an unbalanced panel of 10,646 French firms in 38 manufacturing industries over the period 1978–2001, we can classify these industries into six different regimes depending on the type of competition in the product and the labor market. By far the most predominant regime is one of imperfect competition in the product market and efficient bargaining in the labor market (IC‐EB), followed by a regime of imperfect competition in the product market and perfect competition or right‐to‐manage bargaining in the labor market (IC‐PR), and by a regime of perfect competition in the product market and monopsony in the labor market (PC‐MO). For each of these three predominant regimes, we assess within‐regime firm differences in the estimated average price‐cost mark‐up and rent sharing or labor supply elasticity parameters, following the Swamy methodology to determine the degree of true firm dispersion. To assess the plausibility of our findings in the case of the dominant regime (IC‐EB), we also relate our industry and firm‐level estimates of price‐cost mark‐up and extent of rent sharing to industry characteristics and firm‐specific variables respectively. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Labor markets and capital tax competition

Ogawa et al. (J. Urban Econ. 60:350, 2006) analyze capital tax competition in a fixed-wage approach and show that the original results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (J. Urban Econ. 19:356, 1986) are not preserved in the presence of unemployment. In the present paper, we challenge this view and investigate capital tax competition for some arbitrary institutional setting of the labor market. We find that if the labor market is characterized by some efficient bargaining solution, the results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (J. Urban Econ. 19:356, 1986) are preserved.

Wage and employment effects of a wage norm

This paper analyses how a firm-level tax or subsidy on deviations from a pre-set wage norm may promote employment. This fiscal instrument affects the perception of the labour demand by the workers’ union. The positive employment effect appears both in an efficient bargaining model and in a monopoly union model. For a given reservation wage, the perception effect is the strongest when the norm is close to the wage level which would have been chosen in the absence of the tax. Most transition countries used tax-supported wage norms in the early 1990’s at the beginning of the transition, as a part of their market liberalization programs. We can test the effect of the norm on the wages on a sample of 43 Polish firms in 1990 and 1991. The data support the central role of the wage norm in our model, and suggest that the policy indeed could have a positive employment effect.

Corrigendum to “The strategic choice of union-oligopoly bargaining agenda” [Int. J. Ind. Organ. 17 (1999) 1029–1040

Assuming Cournot competition, Bughin (1999, 'The strategic choice of union-oligopoly bargaining agenda', International Journal of Industrial Organization) states that in a unionized oligopoly with firm specific negotiations, Efficient Bargaining (EB) is always the industry equilibrium both under blockaded and non-blockaded market structures. Extending Bughin's (1999) framework to a conjectural variation model, this note shows that EB emerges as equilibrium only for entry deterrence reasons. In all other cases, conflict of interests among the bargaining parties arise due todifference in dominant strategies, whatever is the degree of competitiveness of the industry.

A simple status quo that ensures participation (with application to efficient bargaining)

We consider Bayesian incentive-compatible mechanisms with independent types and either private values or interdependent values that satisfy a form of “congruence.” We show that in these settings, interim participation constraints are satisfied when the status quo is the randomized allocation that has the same distribution as the equilibrium allocation in the mechanism. Moreover, when utilities are convex in the allocation, we can instead satisfy participation constraints with the deterministic status quo equal to the expected equilibrium allocation in the mechanism. For quasilinear settings, these observations imply the possibility of efficient bargaining when the status quo specifies the expected efficient decision provided that the total surplus is convex in the decision.

Collective Bargaining Under Non-Binding Contracts

We introduce collective bargaining in a static framework where the firm and its risk-neutral employees negotiate over wages in a non-binding contract setting. Our main result is the equivalence between the non-binding collective equilibrium wage-employment contract and the equilibrium contract under binding risk-neutral efficient bargaining. We also demonstrate that our non-cooperative equilibrium wages and profits coincide with the Owen values of the corresponding cooperative game with the coalitional structure that follows from unionization.

The Optimal Bargain between the Elite and the Majority: Party and Managerial Ideologies as Devices to Control Politicians and Managers

We investigate problems that arise in aligning office-seeking politicians with social welfare in situations where society (or the firm) is composed of groups of different sizes with different preferences. Similar alignment issues arise in corporations where management must respond to the demands of multiple constituencies. The problems arise because the agents have a suboptimal incentive to cater to majority preferences in situations with low participation costs and to elite minority preferences in situations with high participation costs. Our paper is mainly devoted to democratic politics, in which there is no group of residual claimants who are aligned to social welfare. In democratic politics, we claim that an efficient elite-majority bargain involves the creation of competing party ideologies that serve to check opportunism by majorities in low participation-cost scenarios and by elites in high participation-cost scenarios, and in doing so align politicians with social welfare. We suggest that in non-profit firms that also lack a residual claimant, an efficient elite-majority bargain involves a parallel creation of managerial ideologies, and that such managerial ideologies may also have utility in the for-profit firm as a supplementary device to foster alignment with firm value.

Micro-Evidence on Rent Sharing from Different Perspectives

This article provides evidence of rent sharing from orthogonal directions by exploiting different dimensions in the same data. Taking advantage of a rich matched employer-employee dataset for France over the period 1984-2001, we consistently compare across-industry heterogeneity in rent-sharing parameters derived from three different approaches. The accounting approach and the standard labor economics approach are compatible with distinct labor bargaining settings (right-to-manage, efficient bargaining, labor hoarding) whereas the productivity approach hinges on the assumption of efficient bargaining. Across the different approaches, we evidently find differences in dispersion of the rent-sharing parameter estimates which could be attributable to differences in modeling assumptions and/or data requirements but these estimates lie within a comparable range. We interpret the latter finding as lending empirical support to efficient bargaining as the nature of the bargaining process in France over the considered period.

Changing Institutions in the European Market: The Impact on Mark-Ups and Rents Allocation

In this paper, we investigate whether the completion of the Single Market Programme has enhanced competition on the product markets across European countries, while taking into account the companion structural reforms undertaken by the member countries. In particular, since the Single Market Programme went hand in hand with major reforms in the labour market and in the institutional setting of important industries (i.e. network industries), we test for a break in both mark-ups and the division of rent between capital and labour. For this purpose we encompass efficient bargaining in the labour market in both our theoretical and empirical model. Using industry data for ten EU countries we find that, without controlling for changes in the rent sharing, mark-up estimates tend to increase in the 1990s. However, once we assume efficient bargaining in the labour market, mark-ups remain virtually unchanged or even decrease in some sectors or groups of countries; the result stems from the declining shares of rents accruing to workers owing to a decline in their bargaining power. Without controlling for this development, a rise in firms’ profitability due to rent reallocation could be wrongly interpreted as an increase in market power. At the industry level the evidence is particularly strong for high and medium-tech manufacturing, for construction and for those activities that went through deep institutional changes and privatization programmes.

Changing Institutions in the European Market: The Impact on Mark-Ups and Rents Allocation

We investigate whether the completion of the Single Market Programme has enhanced competition on the product markets across European countries, taking into account the companion structural reforms undertaken by the member countries, particularly in the labour market and the institutional setting of important industries (i.e. network industries). We test for a break in both mark-ups and the division of rent between capital and labour based on a statistical model incorporating efficient bargaining in the labour market. Using industry data for ten EU countries we find that, without controlling for changes in the rent sharing, mark-up estimates tend to increase in the 1990s. However, once we assume efficient bargaining in the labour market, mark-ups remain virtually unchanged or, in some sectors or groups of countries, even decrease; this reflects the declining shares of rents accruing to workers as a result of their diminished bargaining power. The evidence is particularly strong for high and medium-tech manufacturing, for construction and for those activities that went through deep institutional changes and privatization programmes.