Bargaining Behaviour

Bargaining is a ubiquitous aspect of our daily lives, and most bargaining situations involve a pie (or a surplus) jointly produced by bargaining parties rather than one dropped from a helicopter. Examples abound since any partnership (official or unofficial) where the fruits of collaboration are shared through negotiations would qualify. Do people behave similarly while bargaining over jointly produced pie and bargaining over a manna from heaven? As opposed to what most mainstream theoretical models in economics would say, experimental studies in the last two decades repeatedly gave this question a negative answer. In particular, it has been observed that efforts, contributions or costly investments of any sort in the production phase create entitlements/obligations and influence both the bargaining process and outcomes. These robust experimental findings open a new and a fruitful venue for further research, which Emin Karagözoğlu is pursuing. Some questions this relatively new line of research asks are: "How should we assign tasks in the production phase, taking into account the impact of the assignment mechanism on bargaining behaviour?"; "What is the influence of the relationship between factors of production (i.e., substitutes or complements) on bargaining behaviour?"; "How should we sequence production and bargaining phases in long-run relationships?"; "How do the uncertainties in the production process influence agents' entitlements and bargaining behaviour?" and "How do the asymmetries in power distribution and contributions to the joint surplus interact in bargaining?" Mr Karagözoğlu's recent and ongoing research focuses on such questions concerning bargaining and distribution problems with a jointly produced surplus.

Broadly speaking, Emin Karagözoğlu's research interests are in game theory, experimental economics and behavioural economics. In particular, he studies bargaining problems and games using game theory, the axiomatic approach and laboratory experiments. During his time in Munich, he will work mostly on his ongoing research on the effects of endogenous vs. random role assignment procedures in experimental bargaining games with joint production. While visiting CES, he plans to discuss recent findings from his research as well as provide an overview of earlier studies on bargaining games with joint production and unstructured bargaining games, in mini courses and seminars.

Emin Karagözoğlu is currently an assistant professor of economics at Bilkent University, Department of Economics. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University. He has MA degrees from Pennsylvania State University and Boğaziçi University and a BA degree, also from Boğaziçi University. In 2015, he was awarded the Distinguished Young Scientist Award by the Science Academy of Turkey and the Distinguished Teaching Award by Bilkent University.