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The determinants of voting in multilateral bargaining games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Guillaume R. Fréchette  and
Emanuel Vespa
Guillaume R. Fréchette*
Affiliation:
New York University, New York, USA
Emanuel Vespa
Affiliation:
UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Models of multilateral bargaining predict that agents would vote solely based on the share they are offered and that their vote is determined by whether that share is at least as high as the continuation value (CV) of the game. The standard experiment investigating behavior in multilateral bargaining is not well designed to determine if that is the case. Our experiment makes three changes to the typical design: it introduces substantial variation in the CV (using a within-subjects design and varying the discount factor), it generates variability in offers using computer-generated offers while retaining the equilibrium of the original game, and it uses belief elicitation. These changes allow us to consider whether behavioral voting rules that are independent of the CV or factors besides one’s own share are important to voting decisions. We find that the main determinant of votes is the share one is offered, but that when offers are believed to come from another participant, a proposal is less likely to be approved if the proposer tries to take a lot for himself. Nonetheless, the equilibrium voting rule, which is based on the CV of the game organizes choices better than behavioral rules that are independent of the CV.

Keywords

Multilateral bargainingBaron–FerejohnVoting modelsIntentions

JEL classification

C52: Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection C7: Game Theory and Bargaining Theory C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior D72: Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Journal of the Economic Science Association , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , July 2017 , pp. 26 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2017

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s40881-017-0038-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We wish to thank John Kagel for his valuable inputs on the design of this experiment, as well as the editor and anonymous referees for their comments. We would further like to thank the National Science Foundation (Grant SES-1558857), and the Center for Experimental Social Science for research support. We are responsible for all errors.

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