Fairness through the Lens of Cooperative Game Theory: An Experimental Approach

Abstract

We experimentally investigate how impartial observers allocate money to agents whose complementarity and substitutability determine the surplus that each group can achieve. Analyzing the data through the lens of axioms and solutions from cooperative game theory, a one-parameter model (mixing equal split and Shapley value) arises as a parsimonious description of the data. (JEL C71, C91, D12, D63)