Investment and Bargaining in Joint Ventures: A Family Decision Making Experiment

Werner Güth (), Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel, Matthias Sutter and Hannelore Weck-Hannemann

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2003, vol. 159, issue 2, 323-341

Abstract: Bilateral joint ventures, such as marriage, are economically inspired by their prospects of labor division and specialization. However, specialization makes the partnerwho investsmore in relation-specificqualificationsmore exploitable (holdup problem). In a two-person experiment we study investment and bargaining behavior when specialization improves the chances to win a large prize. A low (full) joint venture relies on an intermediate (high) degree of specialization and low (high) costs in case of failure, e.g., a divorce. Results show that participants choose endogenouslymore efficient joint-venture types and acceptminor attempts at exploitation when bargaining over the revenues of the joint venture.

JEL-codes: C91 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/investment- ... 16280932456032974826 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200306)159:2_323:iabijv_2.0.tx_2-r

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) is currently edited by Gerd Mühlheußer and Bayer, Ralph-C

More articles in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().