The disagreement pointed to the fissures Mr. King confronts, particularly among factions fighting concessions granted by the union in recent years.
which will be regarded as the disagreement point in the following Nash bargaining game.
(1) Individual rationality: NBS should be better off than the disagreement point.
Formally, a bargaining game is defined by a set of feasible utilities U and a disagreement point u0∈U.
The disagreement point u0 represents the 'status quo' prior to bargaining or the worst possible outcomes for the sources.
This notion generalizes the idea that no rational party would accept an agreement that is less favorable than the disagreement point.
His solution consists in choosing the alternative which, in the feasible set, maximizes the product of individual utility gains from the disagreement point (this point is the fallback option when the parties fail to reach an agreement).
First, if the disagreement point is defined, as it probably should, in relation to the relative strength of parties in a "state of nature", then the scope for redistributive solidarity is very limited.
By making the disagreement point the status quo instead of the Hobbesian state of nature, however, agreement will be harder to achieve because, presumably, many will find the status quo attractive.
He makes this explicit in his representation of the contract device as a bargaining problem, making the disagreement point of the bargain (the equivalent of the state of nature) the status quo (2205, 25).
