A model of partnership formation

This paper presents a model of partnership formation. A number of agents want to conduct some business or other activities. Agents may act alone or seek a partner for cooperation and need in the latter case to consider with whom to cooperate and how to share the profit in a collaborative and competitive environment. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which an equilibrium exists. In equilibrium, the partnership formation and the payoff distribution are endogenously determined. Every agent realizes his full potential and has no incentive to deviate from either staying independent or from the endogenously determined partner and payoff. The partnership formation problem contains the widely studied assignment market problem as a special case.