Bargaining power is the relative ability of
parties in an argumentative situation (such as
bargaining
In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service debate the price or nature of a transaction. If the bargaining produces agreement on terms, the transaction takes p ...
,
contract
A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tr ...
writing, or making an
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting ...
) to exert
influence
Influence or influencer may refer to:
*Social influence, in social psychology, influence in interpersonal relationships
** Minority influence, when the minority affect the behavior or beliefs of the majority
*Influencer marketing, through individ ...
over each other. If both parties are on an equal footing in a debate, then they will have equal bargaining power, such as in a perfectly
competitive market
In economics, competition is a scenario where different economic firmsThis article follows the general economic convention of referring to all actors as firms; examples in include individuals and brands or divisions within the same (legal) firm ...
, or between an evenly matched
monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
and
monopsony
In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers. The microeconomic theory of monopsony assumes a single entity ...
.
There are a number of fields where the concept of bargaining power has proven crucial to coherent analysis, including
game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
,
labour economics,
collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The ...
arrangements,
diplomatic negotiations
Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.Ronald Peter Barston, ''Modern diplomacy'', Pearson Education, 2006, p. 1 ...
,
settlement of litigation, the price of
insurance
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
, and any
negotiation in general.
Calculation
Several formulations of bargaining power have been devised. A popular one from 1951 and due to American economist
Neil W. Chamberlain is:
:We may define bargaining power (of A, let us say) as being the cost to B of ''disagreeing'' on A's terms relative to the costs of ''agreeing'' on A's terms ... Stated in another way, a (relatively) high cost to B of disagreement with A means that A's bargaining power is strong. A (relatively) high cost of agreement means that A's bargaining power is weak. Such statements in themselves, however, reveal nothing of the strength or weakness of A ''relative'' to B, since B might similarly possess a strong or weak bargaining power. But if the cost to B of disagreeing on A's terms are greater than the cost of agreeing on A's terms, while the cost to A of disagreeing on B's terms is less than the cost of agreeing on B's terms, then A's bargaining power is greater than that of B. More generally, only if the difference to B between the costs of disagreement and agreement on A's terms is proportionately greater than the difference to A between the costs of disagreement and agreement on B's terms can it be said that A's bargaining power is greater than that of B.
In another formulation, bargaining power is expressed as a ratio of a party's ability to influence the other participant, to the costs of not reaching an agreement to that party:
:
:
:If
is greater than
, then A has greater Bargaining Power than B, and the resulting agreement will tend to favor A. The reverse is expected if B has greater bargaining power instead.
These formulations and more complex models with more precisely defined variables are used to predict the probability of observing a certain outcome from a range of outcomes based on the parties' characteristics and behavior before and after the negotiation.
Buying power
Buying power is a specific type of bargaining power relating to a purchaser and a supplier. For example, a retailer may be able to dictate price to a small supplier if it has a large
market share
Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...
and or can bulk buy.
Economic theory
In modern economic theory, the bargaining outcome between two parties is often modeled by the
Nash Bargaining solution. An example is if party A and party B can collaborate in order to generate a surplus of
. If the parties fail to reach an agreement, party A gets a payoff
and party B gets a payoff
. If
, reaching an agreement yields a larger total surplus. According to the generalized Nash bargaining solution, party A gets
and party B gets
, where
. There are different ways to derive
. For example, Rubinstein (1982) has shown that in a bargaining game with alternating offers,
is close to
when party A is much more patient than party B, while
is equal to
if both parties are equally patient. In this case, party A's payoff is increasing in
as well as in
, and so both parameters reflect different aspects of party A's power. To clearly distinguish between the two parameters, some authors such as Schmitz refer to
as party A's ''bargaining power'' and to
as party A's ''bargaining position''. A prominent application is the
property rights
The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership) is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely and is typically h ...
approach to the
theory of the firm
The theory of the firm consists of a number of economic theories that explain and predict the nature of the firm, company, or corporation, including its existence, behaviour, structure, and relationship to the market. Firms are key drivers in ec ...
. In this application,
is often
exogenously fixed to
, while
and
are determined by investments of the two parties.
See also
*
Bargaining
In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service debate the price or nature of a transaction. If the bargaining produces agreement on terms, the transaction takes p ...
*
Collective buying power
Collective buying power is the ability of a group of consumers to leverage the group size in exchange for discounts.
In the marketplace
Many different companies have used this concept to build business plan
A business plan is a formal writte ...
*
Inequality of bargaining power
Inequality of bargaining power in law, economics and social sciences refers to a situation where one party to a bargain, contract or agreement, has more and better alternatives than the other party. This results in one party having greater p ...
*
Intra-household bargaining Intra-household bargaining refers to negotiations that occur between members of a household in order to arrive at decisions regarding the household unit, like whether to spend or save, whether to study or work.
Bargaining is traditionally defined ...
*
Porter five forces analysis
Porter's Five Forces Framework is a method of analysing the operating environment of a competition of a business. It draws from industrial organization (IO) economics to derive five forces that determine the competitive intensity and, therefore, ...
*
Purchasing power
Purchasing power is the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if one had taken one unit of currency to a store in the 1950s, it would have been possible to buy a greater number of items than would ...
References
{{reflist
Bargaining theory
Cooperative games