An Analysis of Multilateral Negotiations in the World Trade Organization

Abstract

The Doha round of negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) constitutes one of the prime cases of current multilateral negotiations. But in the more than twelve years of the negotiations, little progress has been achieved. Given this, I ask whether there is at all any zone of possible agreement in the Doha round. To answer the question, I present a large new dataset on the negotiation positions of the almost fifty largest WTO members. The dataset is based on a manual coding of the statements by the member states’ ministers at the ministerial conferences in the years 1996–2011. After the aggregation and quantification of these data, a game-theoretical analysis is performed on them. On the basis of this analysis, I find a relatively large zone of agreement among the states and the Nash bargaining solution of their negotiations.

Keywords

• multilateral negotiations
• World Trade Organization
• the Doha round of negotiations
• the liberalization of international trade
• cooperative game theory
• negotation analysis