Stable and efficient bargaining networks (Q1396001)

The author considers a game in which each player selects a bargaining partner within a given network; a player is randomly selected to make an offer to his partner; if the offer is rejected then the partner makes an offer to his selected partner in turn, until there is an agreement. The author computes the payoffs expected to result from a given network, and then studies questions of stability of networks, in terms of whether some pair of players could benefit by adding a link between them or some player by removing a link to him. A general characterization of stability is given, a number of more special cases are solved, and theorems on the existence and efficiency are also proved. In many cases the stable networks are not efficient.