A Structural Measure of Bargaining Fragility in Multi-Domain Agreements
Robert Castro
What the paper says
Negotiation outcomes are commonly analyzed through equilibrium concepts, yet many agreements fail during implementation for reasons not captured by incentive structure alone This paper introduces a pre-equilibrium screening criterion for bargaining fragility based on a small set of agreement-level quantities characterizing dependency architecture: strain τ (the number of operative obligations requiring tracking), curvature κ (the density and strength of interdependencies among elements), compressibility σ (the extent to which complexity can be reduced through modularization without altering functional meaning), and the stability quotient Γ = κ/τ (average interdependence burden per element). We use the inequality Γ > σ as a classification rule; agreements with Γ > σ are classified as structurally fragile and, in the data, exhibit higher sensitivity to perturbations. Across 42 documented agreements, the diagnostic correctly classifies nearly all observed outcomes, with only a single false positive and no false negatives. The framework operates as a pre-equilibrium screen that complements (rather than replaces) Nash and bargaining equilibrium analyses by identifying agreement architectures that are structurally brittle under small shocks.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.