The costs and benefits of symmetry in common-ownership allocation problems

In experimental partnership dissolution problems with complete information, the divide-and-choose mechanism is significantly superior to the winner's-bid auction. The performance of divide-and-choose is mainly affected by reciprocity issues and not by bounded rationality. The performance of the winner's-bid auction is significantly affected by bounded rationality. Contrary to theoretical predictions divide-and-choose exhibits no first-mover bias. •Divide-and-choose is superior to winner's bid auction in partnership dissolution problems when agents know each other well.•Divide-and-choose performance is affected by reciprocity issues and not bounded rationality.•Winner-bid's auction is affected by bounded rationality and not by coordination issues.