The bargaining power of commitment: An experiment of the effects of threats in the sequential hawk–dove game

Abstract

This article studies experimentally the conditions that improve bargaining power by means of threats. The analysis centers on three essential elements of the commitment: the possibility of announcing one's actions, the credibility of these messages, and the experience acquired in the negotiation process. For this, we chose the sequential hawk-dove game due to the fact that it is a negotiation environment with a non-equitable distribution of payoffs in equilibrium. The empirical evidence of our experiment shows that, in the first period, subjects do not realize the bargaining power of the commitment. When the game is repeated and experience increases, senders understand that using threats can work in their

Strategic delegation in Nash bargaining

“…12 Putnam (1988) demonstrates how domestic constitutional constraints can make an international bargainer tougher 13 . Palacio Garcia et al (2015) analyze the impact of threat points in a non‐cooperative bargaining game, namely the “hawk‐dove” game. Abreu and Pearce (2015) also focus on a non‐cooperative bargaining game, the Nash demand game.…”