We study games played between groups of players, where a given group decides which strategy it will play through a vote by its members. When groups consist of two voting players, our games can also be interpreted as network-formation games. In experiments on Stag Hunt games, we find that that the structure of the voting rule completely determines which equilibrium is played, independently of the payoff structure. Thus, we find a stark contrast between how groups and individuals play our games, with payoffs playing a much more important role in equilibrium selection in the latter case. We also explore play between groups where one member of each group dictates the play of that group. We find that the dictator tends to play a less risky strategy when choosing for a group than when playing only for him or herself. We develop a new solution concept, robust-belief equilibrium, which explains the data that we observe. We provide results showing that this solution concept has application beyond the particular games in our experiments.

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A number of competing social preference models have been developed inspired by the evidence from economic experiments. We test the relative performance of some of these models using an experimental design that is aimed at capturing pure distributional concerns in a multi-person setting. We find that the individuals in this study are heterogeneous and that they do not follow any single notion of fairness or inequality aversion. In addition, the results suggest that efficiency concerns are not confined to students of economics but are important to students of all disciplines.

We present a legislative bargaining model of the provision of a durable public good over an in nite horizion. In each period, there is a societal endowment which can either be invested in the public good or consumed. We characterize the optimal public policy, de ned by the time path of investment and consumption. In each period, a legislature with representatives of each of n districts bargain over the current period's endowment for investment in the public good and transfers to each district. We analyze the Markov perfect equilibrium under di erent voting q-rules where q is the number of yes votes required for passage. We show that the e ciency of the public policy is increasing in q because higher q leads to higher investment in the public good and less pork. We examine the theoretical equilibrium predictions by conducting a laboratory experiment with ve-person committees that compares three alternative voting

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We study dynamic committee bargaining over an infinite horizon with discounting. In each period a committee proposal is generated by a random recognition rule, the committee chooses between the proposal and a status quo by majority rule, and the voting outcome in period t becomes the status quo in period t+1. We study symmetric Markov equilibria of the resulting game and conduct an experiment to test hypotheses generated by the theory for pure distributional (divide-the-dollar) environments. In particular, we investigate the effects of concavity in the utility functions, the existence of a Condorcet winning alternative, and the discount factor (committee "impatience"). We report several new findings. Voting behavior is selfish and myopic. Status quo outcomes have great inertia. There are strong treatment effects, that are in the direction predicted by the Markov equilibrium. We find significant evidence of concave utility functions.

Alternating-offer and demand bargaining models of legislative bargaining make very different predictions in terms of both ex-ante and ex-post distribution of payoffs, as well as the role of the order of play. The experiment shows that actual bargaining behavior is not as sensitive to the different bargaining rules as the theoretical point predictions, while the comparative statics are in line with both models. We compare our results to studies attempting to distinguish between these two approaches using field data, finding strong similarities

We experimentally test competing theories of three-player majoritarian bargaining models with fixed, known reservation values. Subjects are randomly assigned to three roles: a proposer and two types of voters. Each role is randomly assigned a reservation value, i.e. a given amount of money he/she will receive if the proposal is rejected. These values are known to all players. Proposers then can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer on how to split a fixed, known amount of money among the players. If a majority of players accepts the proposal, the players ’ payoffs are determined by the proposal; if the proposal is rejected, each player receives his or her reservation value. We assess the ability of three behavioral hypotheses – selfish-subgame perfect, egalitarian, and “fair ” (inequality averse) behavior – to account for our results. Our primary design variable is the proposer’s reservation value, which allows us to obtain different implications from each hypothesis. We find that each hypothesis is inconsistent with our data in important respects. In particular, subjects strongly respond to changes in reservation values as if In 1978 Romer and Rosenthal published an alternative to Black’s median voter theory for

This paper analyzes data from an experimental investigation of a majoritarian bargaining experiment. A learning model is proposed to account for the evolution of play in this experiment, and it is shown that a unique learning model can account very well for the paths of play under two di®erent amendment rules. It is also suggested that a correction must be made to account for the panel structure of the data. Such corrections have been used in other ¯elds and are known to be important as uncorrected standard errors may be severely biased downward. These results indicate that this correction also has an important e®ect in this application. The data and the estimated learning model suggest that after proposing \fair" divisions to start with subjects adapt and their proposals change rapidly in the treatment where uneven proposals are almost always accepted. Their beliefs in the estimated learning model are in°uenced by more than just the most recent outcomes. JEL codes: C92, D83, C12

for very helpful discussions. We thank Hernan Meller for his valuable research assistance and Brad Coker from Mason-Dixon Polling and Research, Inc. for providing us with the data on gubernatorial elections. The paper has bene…ted from the comments of audiences at seminars and conferences too many to mention. All errors and mistakes in the paper remain our own. y