Résumé

The experimental implementation of cooperative solution concepts has traditionally been confined to the framework of Transferable Utility (TU) games, where coalitional worths are independent of the surrounding coalition structure and the grand coalition is assumed to be uniquely efficient. This paper moves beyond these restrictive assumptions by studying bargaining and coalition formation in Partition Function Games, following the seminal framework of Thrall and Lucas (1963). In this richer setting, the worth of any coalition depends on the entire partition of players, thereby explicitly incorporating inter-coalitional externalities, which may be positive or negative. Furthermore, we allow for environments in which coalition structures composed of smaller groups of players may dominate the grand coalition in terms of aggregate efficiency, reflecting the coordination and communication costs that arise in large organizations.

 Within this framework, we propose the experimental implementation of two bargaining mechanisms designed to implement generalized Shapley value concepts as their equilibrium outcome: the procedure proposed by Hafalir (2007) and the one proposed by Maskin (2003). We compare the behavioral and efficiency properties of these two structured mechanisms against a free-form negotiation protocol inspired by Chessa et al. (2025), recently developed for TU games.

 Given the complexity of presenting a Partition Function Game in a laboratory setting, we propose a novel experimental bargaining procedure grounded in a culinary context.

Co-authors : Yukihiko Funaki, Nobuyuki Hanaki, Aymeric Lardon, Takashi Yamada

Informations pratiques