Nash Bargained Consumption Decisions: A Revealed Preference Analysis

34 Pages Posted: 13 May 2011

See all articles by L. Cherchye

L. Cherchye

KU Leuven; Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM)

Thomas Demuynck

Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE)

Bram De Rock

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES)

Date Written: April 16, 2011

Abstract

We present a revealed preference analysis of the testable implications of the Nash bargaining solution. Our specific focus is on a two-player game involving consumption decisions. We consider a setting in which the empirical analyst has information on both the threat points bundles and the bargaining outcomes. We first establish a revealed preference characterization of the Nash bargaining solution. This characterization implies conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for consistency of observed consumption behavior with the Nash bargaining model. However, these conditions turn out to be nonlinear in unknowns and therefore difficult to verify. Given this, we subsequently present necessary conditions and sufficient conditions that are linear (and thus easily testable). We illustrate the practical usefulness of these conditions by means of an application to experimental data. Such an experimental setting implies a most powerful analysis of the empirical goodness of the Nash bargaining model for describing consumption decisions. To our knowledge, this provides a first empirical test of the Nash bargaining model on consumption data. Finally, we consider the possibility that threat point bundles are not observed. This obtains testable conditions for the Nash bargaining model that can be used in non-experimental (e.g. household consumption) settings, which often do not contain information on individual consumption bundles in threat points.

Keywords: consumption decision, Nash bargaining, revealed preferences, experimental data

JEL Classification: D11, D12, D13

Suggested Citation

Cherchye, Laurens and Demuynck, Thomas and De Rock, Bram, Nash Bargained Consumption Decisions: A Revealed Preference Analysis (April 16, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1833247 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1833247

Laurens Cherchye (Contact Author)

KU Leuven ( email )

Oude Markt 13
Leuven, Vlaams-Brabant
Belgium

Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM)

P.O. Box 1738
3000 DR Rotterdam
Netherlands

Thomas Demuynck

Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE) ( email )

Naamsestraat 69
Leuven, B-3000
Belgium

Bram De Rock

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES) ( email )

Av. F. D. Roosevelt, 50
CP 114
Brussels, B-1050
Belgium

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