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This article focuses on the four factors that display quantitatively the conditions for determinate bargaining power. Bargaining power is a feature of the transaction, which is defined as any exchange of goods between parties. The present article will deal solely with selfish transactions, in which each party tries to receive more in return for less, in contrast to the generous transaction, in which one or both parties try to give more in return for receiving less. The paper will also confine attention to unique or unrelated transactions. In the unique transaction all significant bargaining power forces are encompassed within the immediate transaction. By contrast, in interrelated transactions the parties are significantly influenced by the expected repercussions of the immediate transaction on subsequent transactions, with either the same or different parties, and involving either the same or different goods. Bargaining power forces will be defined as those ingredients in the transaction which determine the terms, or the limits on possible terms, on which the transaction will take place. Bargaining rower itself is the net effect of the operation of the bargaining power forces in any particular transaction. Bargaining power is viewed as the ability to get advantageous terms in the transaction, and "greater" bargaining power is the ability to get better terms than would be provided by "lesser" bargaining power. The present analysis makes no attempt to establish any absolute measures of bargaining power. It does, however, permit diagnosis of the direction of effect of a change in any one force on the terms of the transaction. A well-known parallel is that economists cannot compute the price of any good "from scratch," but can analytically predict the direction of effect of any particular kind of change in the magnitude of any supply or demand force.

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Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)