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
Author Biography
Michal Parízek
Born in 1985, he is an assistant at the Institute of Political Science Studies at
the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. His research
deals with issues of the design of international institutions, multilateral
negotiations in the World Trade Organization and European policy. Apart
from teaching about the issues of international institutions and
negotiations, he teaches game theory and quantitative research methods.
He studied at Charles University, the University of Bath, Princeton
University and Freie Universität Berlin.