Characterizing NTU-bankruptcy rules using bargaining axioms

This paper takes an axiomatic bargaining approach to bankruptcy problems with nontransferable utility, by using properties from bargaining theory in order to characterize bankruptcy rules. In particular, we derive new axiomatic characterizations of the proportional rule, the truncated proportional rule, and the constrained relative equal awards rule, using properties which concern changes in the estate or in the claims.

On the design of equity-oriented pharmaceutical copayments

In this paper, we propose a new approach to address the problem of designing pharmaceutical copayments. The rationale for positive copayments in our setting lies in the presence of budgetary constraints and, hence, in the need to raise funds in order to finance the costs of the treatments. We use results from the literature on axiomatic bargaining with claims to incorporate criteria of distributive justice into the design of copayments. We find that if the government constrains patient rights to what is medically feasible, equity-based copayments vary from a percentage of the cost of the treatment, to a flat rate per prescription. If the government also takes into account the burden of disease experienced by patients, then copayments based on equity lead to a relation between copayments and clinical status that diverges from those proposals based on efficiency arguments. In particular, we show that equity-based copayments might be increasing in the health gains that the treatments provide to the patients. The reason is that these copayments try to avoid a “double jeopardy” problem, by ensuring that those patients with a large burden of disease do not face also an important monetary cost.

The Probability to Reach an Agreement as a Foundation for Axiomatic Bargaining

We revisit the Nash bargaining model and axiomatize a procedural solution that maximizes the probability of successful bargaining. Our characterization spans several known solution concepts, including the special cases of the Nash, egalitarian, and utilitarian solutions. Using a probability‐based language, we offer a natural interpretation for the product operator underlying the Nash solution: when the bargainers' individual acceptance probabilities are independent, their product recovers the joint acceptance probability.