We consider a model of decentralized bargaining among three parties. Parties meet one-on-one after being randomly matched, and can sell or buy votes to one another. The party with a majority of the votes can decide to implement its preferred policy or extend negotiations to capture additional...

We report the results of an experimental investigation of the Baron and Ferejohn (1989) model of legislative bargaining with cheap talk. Communication results in substantially increased proposer power, close to the stationary subgame perfect equilibrium prediction. This is achieved primarily...

The finite horizon version of a popular legislative bargaining model due to Baron and Ferejohn is investigated. With three or more rounds of bargaining a continuum of distributions are supportable as subgame perfect equilibria in Markov strategies. Allowing for history dependent strategies...

This paper examines the relationship between voting weights and expected equilibrium payoffs in legislative bargaining and provides a necessary and sufficient condition for payoffs to be proportional to weights. This condition has a natural interpretation in terms of the supply and demand for...

Outcomes under the Baron-Ferejohn (1989) model are investigated when proposers distribute benefits versus imposing costs under an experimental design where predicted outcomes are theoretically isomorphic, absent reference dependent preferences. Initial experimental sessions showed greater...

This paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him. In equilibrium, a large majority of legislators vote for the first-period...

Committee voting has mostly been investigated from the perspective of the standard Baron-Ferejohn model of bargaining over the division of a pie, in which bargaining ends as soon as the committee reaches an agreement. In standing committees, however, existing agreements can be amended. This...

We present a legislative bargaining model of the provision of a durable public good over an infinite horizion. In each period, there is a societal endowment which can either be invested in the public good or consumed. We characterize the optimal public policy, defined by the time path of...

This paper proposes a mechanism to overcome the possibility that political parties may block the nomination of High-Court judges when the Parliament is involved in their nomination and theirmandate expires on a fixed date. This possibility arises when the default option is that the judge whose...

During the last decade unicameral proposals have been put forward in fourteen US states. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework casting some lights on the drawbacks of bicameral state legislatures and on the effects of the proposed constitutional reforms. In a setting where lawmakers...