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Nontechnical SummaryBargaining situations and negotiations frequently look like a strife for fairness. While bargainers are arguing to get their "fair share" when they feel disadvantaged, the meaning of "fair" is often heavily debated. Negotiations therefore become more complicated when there is more than one justifiable fairness norm (Raiffa 1982, p.268). Here, negotiators could potentially pick those fairness principles which justify additional demands from their side.Besides being prevalent in daily life, equity criteria are also ubiquitously used in the international arena when it comes to negotiating multilateral agreements. In the international negotiations on the mitigation of climate change, different notions of equity have been This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying the importance of equity criteria in the formulation of negotiation positions of major parties in the UNFCCC process. It puts forward equity as an important structural element to understanding negotiation outcomes. We first advance bargaining theory to incorporate the self-serving use of equity. Agents are predicted to push equity principles which benefit them more than other parties, in particular those which are disadvantageous to parties with large bargaining power. Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, we then study how participants assess the support of the equity criteria by major parties in the climate negotiations. Comparing these results with cost estimates from a POLES model, we find that the perceived equity preferences of the respective countries or groups of countries are in general consistent with our hypothesis of a self-serving use of equity criteria and thereby lend support for our theoretical model. While this self-interest is recognized by the participants of our survey for the positions of the USA and the G77/China as well as Russia, the EU manages to be seen as choosing (self-serving) equity arguments out of fairness concerns and in order to facilitate the negotiations. Abstract. This paper puts forward equity as an important structural element to understanding negotiation outcomes. We first advance bargaining theory to incorporate the self-serving use of equity. Agents are predicted to push equity principles which benefit them more than other parties, in particular those which are disadvantageous to part...
