In this paper we give a theoretical model of buyers' behaviour on a market for a perishable good where no prices are posted. We show that if buyers learn from their own previous experience there is a sharp division between those who learn to be loyal to certain sellers and those who continue to ‘shop around’. This feature remains in more general models which are simulated and is consistent with empirical data from the Marseille fish market.

The paper investigates how far a particular procedure, called the “descending demand procedure,” can take us in finding equitable allocations of indivisible goods. Both interpersonal and intrapersonal criteria of equitability are considered. It is shown that the procedure generally fares well on an interpersonal criterion of “balancedness”; specifically, the resulting allocations are Pareto-optimal and maximize the well-being of the worst-off individual. As a criterion of intrapersonal equitability, the property of envy-freeness is considered. To accommodate envy-freeness, a modification of the basic procedure is suggested. With two individuals, the modified procedure is shown to select the envy-free allocations that are balanced, i.e. the allocations that maximize the well-being of the worse-off individual among all envy-free allocations. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: In the recent experimental literature several social preference models have been suggested that address observed behavior not reducible to the pursuit of selfinterest. Inequality aversion is one such model where preferences are distributional. Frequently, envy is suggested as the underlying rationale for inequality aversion. Envy is a central criterion in the theoretical literature on fair division, whose definition (Foley 1967) differs from the more casual use of the word in the experimental literature. We present and discuss results from free-form bargaining experiments on fair division problems where the role of envy in Foley's sense can be analyzed and compared to social preferences. We find that envy freeness does matter as a secondary criterion. Terms of use: Documents inKeywords: Fairness, Envy Freeness, Social Preferences, Bargaining JEL Classification: A13, C78, C91, D63 Acknowledgments: We thank Steven Brams, Gary Charness, Karl Schlag, Reinhard Selten, Avner Shaked, and William Thomson for discussions and comments on this work in its early and developing stages. We are grateful for valuable research assistance by Sebastian Kube and Javier Sanchez Monzon and to Thorsten Chmura, Thomas Pitz and staff at the experimental lab at the University of Bonn for helping to conduct the experiments. We also appreciate the opportunity to use Reinhard John's and Katharina Pabel's classroom time to conduct our questionnaire. We thank participants of the

Abstract:We report the results of a questionnaire study on the fair distribution of indivisible goods. We collected data from three different subject pools, first-and second-year students majoring in economics, law students, and advanced economics students with some background knowledge of fairness theories. The purpose of this study is to assess the empirical relevance of various fairness criteria such as inequality aversion, the utilitarian principle of maximizing the sum of individual payoffs, the Rawlsian "maximin" principle of maximizing the payoff of the worst-off individual, and the criterion of envy-freeness (in the sense of Foley 1967).

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In a population with a local interaction structure, where individuals interact with their neighbors and learning is by way of imitating a successful neighbor, cooperation is shown to be a stable strategy that cannot easily be eliminated from the population.

Abstract.We study the Fictitious Play process with bounded and unbounded recall in pure coordination games for which failing to coordinate yields a payoff of zero for both players. It is shown that every Fictitious Play player with bounded recall may fail to coordinate against his own type. On the other hand, players with unbounded recall are shown to coordinate (almost surely) against their own type as well as against players with bounded recall. This implies that a FP player's realized average utility is (almost surely) at least as large as his minmax payoff in 2x2 coordination games. JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D83.

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