ABSTRACT
Nearing the completion of a laborious excursion through a variety of models of coalition formation and experiments designed to test these models, one feels the need for a summary integrative statement that somehow capsulizes the entire enterprise. Although we have reached several conclusions in the preceding two chapters about the descriptive power of several models and their relative success or failure in accounting for the outcomes of several classes of characteristic function game experiments, it is our contention that such an integrative statement is not timely. The area of coalition formation is undergoing a rapid development in both theory and experimentation, which may render any summary conclusions obsolete in a relatively brief time. Instead, we shall have to content ourselves with several observations, each of which remarks in its own way on the present state of the data base and of theory construction in the area of coalition formation, but which are themselves often disjoint. These remarks are grouped into two general rubrics oriented towards recommendations for future work. One rubric is the realm of data collection, while the other is the realm of theory development.
