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Independence of the status quo? A weak and a strong impossibility result for social decisions by bargaining

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Abstract

There are several ethical objections to the dependence on the status quo when bargaining mechanisms are applied to problems of collective choice and, in this context, there is also some discussion about how to define the status quo.

Can one think of bargaining mechanisms defined for some set of decision problems or of bargaining solutions for special problems that are independent of the status quo? Under which conditions do they exist? What are the crucial properties of the classical bargaining solutions or of bargaining mechanisms on economic environments implying dependence?

These questions are answered by two impossibility results. It turns out that the only crucial assumption we search for is the axiom of “Weak Individual Rationality”. We also point out the consequences of our results for the discussion mentioned above.

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Author notes

  1. Marlies Klemisch-Ahlert

    Present address: Department of Economics, University of Osnabrück, Postbox 4469, D-4500, Osnabrück, Germany

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    1. Marlies Klemisch-Ahlert
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    Additional information

    I am grateful to Wulf Gaertner for his encouraging comments. This research was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

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    Klemisch-Ahlert, M. Independence of the status quo? A weak and a strong impossibility result for social decisions by bargaining. Zeitschr. f. Nationalökonomie 53, 83–93 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01227017

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01227017

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