Bargaining with neighbors: is justice contagious?

Abstract

We investigate evolutionary dynamics for the simplest symmetric bargaining game in two different settings. Bargaining with strangers, modelled by the replicator dynamics, sometimes converges to fair division–sometimes not. Bargaining with neighbors, modelled by imitation dynamics on a spatial lattice, almost always converges to fair division. Furthermore, convergence is remarkably rapid. We vary the model to isolate the reasons for these differences. In various forms of bargaining with neighbors, justice is contagious.