The importance of structure in linking games

A common approach in modeling negotiations is to apply game theory to singl e issues. Recent work has suggested that the complexity of international ne gotiations can be better modeled by linking independent games. Successful l inking is possible when the linked issues have compensating asymmetry of si milar magnitude. An important result of linked games is that such games pro duce a greater feasible set of choices relative to the aggregated isolated games. In this paper, we demonstrate that achieving strict dominance of the linked game is not trivial and that results and implications depend on the structures of the isolated games. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.