Essays On Veto Bargaining Games

Abstract: This dissertation discuss outcome of bargaining game in the presence of a veto player. The essays experimentally analyze the outcome of bargaining game in the presence of veto players. The first essay experimentally examines the veto power -- the right to unilaterally block decisions but without the ability to unilaterally secure their preferred outcome-in committee bargaining. I consider Winter (1996) for two cases: urgent committees where available total share is discounted by a half between stages i.e. discount factor, [delta] =.50, and non-urgent committees where available total share is discounted by 5% between stages i.e. [delta] =.95. Our experimental outcomes show an efficiency loss in some non-urgent cases and higher tendency to propose minimum winning coalitions by veto players, both of which are silent in the theory. I also identify substantial advantages in the share of veto players and proposers, qualitatively identical to the theory that veto power in conjunction with proposer power generates excessive power for the veto player. I relate our results to the theoretical literature on the impact of veto power as well as concerns about the impact of veto power in real-life committees. The second essay discusses the voting patterns of veto and control games in the first essay. This focuses on the following analyses. First, this examines the stochastic dominance in the empirical cumulative density functions of shares accepted among veto, non-veto, and control players. Second, the voting patterns of the three-type players are discussed in the random effect probit model. As a last, voting patterns using random effect probit model is discussed inside veto games in order to examine how the voters respond to proposals across different types of proposers.