Bargaining Delay in Multilateral Trade Negotiations

This paper theoretically and empirically explores bargaining delay in tariff negotiations. By imposing a bargaining structure in an equilibrium trade framework, I derive many testable predictions of delay. I then take my model to the newly compiled GATT (Torquay) tariff negotiation data, which includes detailed (product-level) information of the timing and contents of countries’ (back-and-forth) proposals to each other. My empirical exercise broadly supports the theoretical predictions – delay is positively correlated with bargaining externality, as measured (inversely) by the export market concentration.