Bankruptcy situations with references

Resumen

In a bankruptcy situation, one has to divide a given amount of money (estate) among a set of agents, each of whom has a claim on it. The total amount claimed typically exceeds the estate available, so not all the claims of the agents can be fully satisfied. In Pulido et al. (2001) a real bankruptcy situation, arising from the university management, is analyzed. In this analysis two types of information were used. On the one hand, the �claims� of the different agents and, on the other hand, the �references� obtained by applying objective criteria. Hence, this additional information was exogenous to the claimants but closely related to the problem. Pulido et al. (2001) focused the problem as a �bankruptcy situation with references� and used the additional information as a starting point to begin to distribute the estate. In their study the total amount provided by the reference point was less than the estate. This paper deals with bankruptcy situations with references in the general case. We introduce to new games associated with any bankruptcy problem with references and a new monotonicity property for standard bankruptcy rules, which will play an important role in the paper. We analyze compromise solutions in this context.