Instructional Manual for Burden Sharing and Public Goods Investments in Policy

This paper describes the basic laboratory experiment design that has been developed to assess a new Multilateral Bargaining institution that may be used for trade negotiations. Our overall objective is to implement a series of laboratory experiments that tests the ability of this institutions to resolve trade disputes. In section 2 we provide a brief overview of the new institution that is being studied; details may be found in Rausser and Simon [1991a] [1991b]. In section 3 we discuss several aspects of our experiment design, especially the careful wording required in our instructions to subjects. In section 4 we document how we have been able to solve the model numerically, using flexible and powerful software that will allow much richer models to be solved. Finally, in section 5 we document the use of computer software that has been developed to actually conduct the laboratory experiments.