Experimental Economic Approaches on Trade Negotiations

This paper experimentally examines the multilateral bargaining games to derive some policy implications for real trade negotiations. It shows the following findings: there are significant delays in games including veto players in some circumstances, but no delays in games including multiple-vote players. In addition, non-veto players as weak players, which are disadvantaged in taking share, make collusive attempts against veto players, but not effectively. As policy implications, this paper suggests enforceable deadlines or threats toward low-quality agreements to reduce the delay problems. Furthermore, as another remedy for the delays, it suggests an effort to group countries like multiple-vote players in unequal-weight games.