TI study a situation where two players disagree on the division of a good. In the first of two stages, the players can divide the good peacefully between them by signing a contract. If either or both players reject the contract, they must engage in a costly contest over the good. One of the...

The note focuses on the marginal rates of substitution (MRS) in Nash’s product formula solution to bargaining and why the formula works. Two simple examples from duopoly and bilateral monopoly are used to demonstrate that the MRS’s for both players are implicitly in the contract curve and...