Recognition for sale

I examine the consequences of letting players compete for bargaining power in a multilateral bargaining game. In each period, the right to propose an offer is sold to the highest bidder, and all players pay their bids. If players vote according to any rule in which no player has veto power, then the first proposer captures the entire surplus. If a full consensus is needed for an offer to be accepted, then the first proposer shares the surplus with at most one other player, and as the period length between offers vanishes, one player may capture virtually the entire surplus. In settings with a stochastic or an endogenous surplus, players are unwilling to efficiently delay agreement or invest in the surplus.