We study the implications of reciprocity on agenda setting in a sequential policy decision. We designed a laboratory experiment in which a committee decides sequentially on three independent bills. Selfish committee members would turn down all bills but reciprocity allows for implicit vote...

Comprehensive reforms often fail or become piecemeal during preparatory phase of the legislation. A promising candidate to explain the failure of comprehensive reforms is vote trading on a subset of individual bills included in the original comprehensive reform. When legislators expect...