2. Commitment Tactics in Bargaining Under Complete Information

In this chapter, I will focus on the complete information non-cooperative literature on commitment in this millennium. I define pre-commitment as an explicit choice to restrict one’s future action space. I will thus not consider the endogenous commitment literature where commitment arises as a by-product of past actions. I will also not address reputational bargaining nor dynamic incomplete information bargaining. The key finding is that costly strategic pre-commitments which are uncertain to succeed may unavoidably lead to inefficiency—a finding challenging the received wisdom that complete information bilateral bargaining is necessarily efficient. These models thus suggest an alternative to incomplete information in explaining the empirically observed delay and inefficiency in bargaining and conflict. I summarize the theoretical developments, I discuss the applied future directions, the empirical evidence, and the limitations of the approach