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arXiv · 1004.2079

Bargaining dynamics in exchange networks

Mohsen Bayati·Christian Borgs·Jennifer Chayes·Yashodhan Kanoria·Andrea Montanari
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Abstract

We consider a one-sided assignment market or exchange network with transferable utility and propose a model for the dynamics of bargaining in such a market. Our dynamical model is local, involving iterative updates of 'offers' based on estimated best alternative matches, in the spirit of pairwise Nash bargaining. We establish that when a balanced outcome (a generalization of the pairwise Nash bargaining solution to networks) exists, our dynamics converges rapidly to such an outcome. We extend our results to the cases of (i) general agent 'capacity constraints', i.e., an agent may be allowed to participate in multiple matches, and (ii) 'unequal bargaining powers' (where we also find a surprising change in rate of convergence).

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Mohsen Bayati, Christian Borgs, Jennifer Chayes, Yashodhan Kanoria, Andrea Montanari. 2011-12-06. Bargaining dynamics in exchange networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/1004.2079

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