BARGAINING BEHAVIOR IN A BUSINESS SIMULATION GAME *

Three studies of labor-management negotiations were conducted within the context of a business simulation game. Face-to-face bargaining lasted approximately two hours and resulted in settlements that were incorporated into the simulation game parameters. A total of 56 simulated companies, each comprised of five MBA students, were studied. Results from the first study showed that extending low initial offers, extracting large first concessions, and making a high number of concessions were management bargaining tactics associated with obtaining a low wage rate. These findings were supported by study two. The third study found that an intrateam power mode of orientation was positively correlated with bargaining success and was negatively correlated with overall game success. The results support the use of a simulation game for teaching and research in bargaining.     

Note on Second-Order Polynomial Regression Models

Polynomial regression models have applications in the social sciences and in business research. Unfortunately, such models have a high degree of multicollinearity that creates problems with the statistical assessment of the model. In fact, the collinearity may be so severe that it could lead to an incorrect conclusion that some of the terms in the model are not statistically significant and should therefore be omitted from the model. This note provides a simple transformation to achieve orthogonality in polynomial models between the linear and quadratic terms, thereby eliminating the collinearity problem. It also shows that the same procedure does not achieve orthogonality for higher-order terms. An example data set is analyzed to show the benefits of such a procedure.     

FINANCIAL FRAGILITY,LIQUIDITY, AND ASSET PRICES

We define a financial system to be fragile if small shocks have disproportionately large effects. In a model of financial intermediation, we show that small shocks to the demand for liquidity cause either high asset‐price volatility or bank defaults or both. Furthermore, as the liquidity shocks become vanishingly small, the asset‐price volatility is bounded away from zero. In the limit economy, with no shocks, there are many equilibria. However, if banks face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, then the only equilibria that are robust to the introduction of small aggregate risk involve stochastic consumption as well as volatile asset, prices. (JEL: D5, D8, G2)