Do people exploit their bargaining power? An experimental study

Do people "play fair," or do they exploit their bargaining power? This paper suggests that such questions may not be well posed. It studies two bargaining situations that are very similar from the point of view of current fairness/focal theories of behavior, but differ in their strategic aspects. Different behavior in the two cases and a tendency by subjects after the experiment to describe as "fair" what actually occurred are reported.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29198/1/0000252.pd