Rationalizability and Equilibrium in N-Person Sequential Bargaining

This paper deals with N-person sequential bargaining games with complete information (perfect or almost perfect information). For N-person sequential bargaining games, uniqueness of the SPE has been obtained by allowing the players to exit with partial agreements. Adopting a non-equilibrium approach, we show that N-person sequential bargaining games without exit are only solvable by a refinement of rationallzability for multi-stage games (trembling-hand rationalizability) if the players are sufficiently impatient. Nevertheless, N-person sequential bargaining games with exit are solvable by trembling-hand rationalizability whatever the players' impatience. That is, once we take up the non-equilibrium approach, the exit opportunity still fulfils its original aim: we achieve a unique solution by introducing the exit opportunity.