Efficiency, equality, and labelling: An experimental investigation of focal points in explicit bargaining

Sugdent, Robert (2017). Efficiency, equality, and labelling: An experimental investigation of focal points in explicit bargaining. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852873

This network project brings together economists, psychologists, computer and complexity scientists from three leading centres for behavioural social science at Nottingham, Warwick and UEA. This group will lead a research programme with two broad objectives: to develop and test cross-disciplinary models of human behaviour and behaviour change; to draw out their implications for the formulation and evaluation of public policy.
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Data description (abstract)

We investigate Schelling’s hypothesis that payoff-irrelevant labels
(“cues”) can influence the outcomes of bargaining games with
communication. In our experimental games, players negotiate over
the division of a surplus by claiming valuable objects that have
payoff-irrelevant spatial locations. Negotiation occurs in continuous
time, constrained by a deadline. In some games, spatial cues are
opposed to principles of equality or efficiency. We find a strong tendency for players to agree on efficient and minimally unequal payoff divisions, even if spatial cues suggest otherwise. But if there are two such divisions, cues are often used to select between them, inducing distributional effects.

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