The Experimental Design

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at the Bonn Laboratory of Experimental Economics. The subjects were mostly students of economics and law who never participated in a twoperson bargaining game before. They were informed about the bargaining rules in a 20 minutes introductory session (for details, see Appendix A). This introduction also provided the information about the point to cash rate and the subjects were told that their objective should be the maximization of their payoffs. Afterwards they were seated in separate cubicles in the laboratory. Each cubicle was equipped with a computer terminal which was connected via a network to the other terminals. The interaction of the subjects was controlled by the terminal program. The bargaining was anonymous, which means that a subject neither knew the name of the opponent nor the cubicle he was seated in. The communication between the subjects was restricted to the formal interactions of proposing, accepting, and breaking off. No verbal communication was permitted. The information provided on the computer screen consisted of the alternative of the player, the coalition value, and the complete history of the bargaining process. The subjects had no access to information about games in which they were not participants.