Bargaining

This paper focuses on the effects of nonbinding recommendations on bargaining outcomes. Recommendations are theorized to have two effects: they can create a focal point for final bargaining positions, and they can decrease outcome uncertainty should dispute persist. While the focal point effect may help lower dispute rates, the uncertainty reduction effect is predicted to do the opposite for risk-averse bargainers. Which of these effects dominates is of critical importance in the optimal design of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures, which are becoming increasingly utilized to help resolve disputes in a variety of settings. We theoretically examine the effects of recommendations on the bargaining contract zone. Our theoretical framework, which allows bargainers ’ final positions to influence a binding outcome should negotiations fail, provides for a more stringent test of focal points than previously considered. We also present data from controlled laboratory bargaining ...

We develop an endogenous growth model with capital and pollution externalities to analyse whether environmental policy should be decided upon by a parliament or an independent regulator. We find that an independent regulator gives raise to suboptimal equilibria. On the contrary, when the environmental decision is taken in parliament, it induces compromises in other policy dimensions due to coalition formation. This avoids that a single group gets majority and confiscates capital or labour income from the other groups.

Mutually beneficial cooperation depends on implicit social contracts, but instituting a social contract faces two fundamental problems: The first is cooperating to produce a surplus; the second is deciding how to divide this surplus. This study develops a two stage compound game in which players have an opportunity to cooperate to produce a surplus, then bargain over its allocation. It also introduces asymmetries in the bargaining power of players to measure its impact on cooperation. Building on ideas from replicator dynamics, this study is the first to investigate behaviour in this compound game of cooperation and fairness with real participants (n = 157). The findings show evidence for cooperation and fairness as coevolved strategies, with players preferring cooperative strategies in the compound game even when not a Nash Equilibrium. Simulated interactions using the sets of declared strategies
showed games with symmetric bargaining power of the players to be more socially efficient in the joint creation of a surplus and its division. Furthermore, a position of asymmetrical bargaining with higher power significantly interrupted players’ ability to form accurate higher order beliefs about what the other player in a low power position was likely to do, leading to a decreased coordination rate. These results invite further
experimentation with this compound game of cooperation and fairness using human subjects with real stakes and under repeated conditions with learning.

This study examined industrial conflict and its management strategies in selected manufacturing companies in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study utilized co-relational survey method which involves the use of structured questionnaire and personal observation to elicit information from the respondents. Participants comprised of staffs of three manufacturing companies in Lagos, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was employed in selecting the respondents from the three manufacturing companies under the study. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistic including tables, frequency counts, and percentages as well as mean scores. The findings revealed that the causes of conflict in manufacturing companies in Lagos State, Nigeria include poor means of communicating grievances to top managers, unfavorable economic and industrial policies, poor employee compensation and welfare among others. Therefore, this study concluded that managers should combine strategies such as barga...

What grants influence in the European Council? Drawing on general theories of negotiation, this article isolates and illustrates three complementary sources of bargaining power in the European Council: state sources of power, institutional sources of power and individual sources of power. It reports the results of a unique series of elite interviews with European heads of state and government, foreign ministers and top-level civil servants. Elite testimonies suggest that the state dimension of power is the most fundamental, whereas the institutional and individual dimensions of power play a secondary role and mainly mediate the impact of structural power asymmetries.

Scholars and policymakers currently lack systematic criteria for determining the credibility of China's foreign policy signals, which has produced widely divergent conclusions about its likely intentions. "China optimists" view China's cooperative signals as credible, while dismissing its non-cooperative behaviors as unrepresentative of its broader preferences. Conversely, "China pessimists" see China's cooperative signals as non-credible misrepresentation, and focus on China's recent "assertive" behavior. Drawing on theoretical scholarship on signaling and credibility in IR, this paper introduces general deductive criteria for assigning credibility to a rising state's foreign policy signals. It then applies these criteria to evaluate the specific Chinese signals that optimists and pessimists have cited in support of their respective positions. The analysis finds that both optimists and pessimists have overlooked multiple conditions that have reduced the credibility of China's cooperative and non-cooperative foreign policy signals alike. This implies that far more uncertainty about China's intentions is warranted than has been acknowledged on either side of the current debate.

This article examines power dynamics in political groupings during
the 2014 Afghanistan presidential election and assesses the impact on
political stability and order. The focus is the power dynamics of local
political-economic and identity networks that have come to underpin
and constitute the state in post-2001 international state-building.
The article first seeks to understand how the complex relationships
between the two leading presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and
Abdullah Abdullah, and key powerbrokers were negotiated and
subsequently influenced electoral outcomes. Second, focusing on
negotiations over the appointment of the Cabinet ministers, advisers
and staff, and governors, the study maps the restructuring of political
networks within the Afghan state. The analysis reveals the impact of
the election on the redistribution of power and resources, and the
consequences for political order and state stability in the post-2014
period.

Terrorists attack civilians to coerce their governments into making political concessions. Does this strategy work? To empirically assess the effectiveness of terrorism, the author exploits variation in the target selection of 125 violent substate campaigns. The results show that terrorist campaigns against civilian targets are significantly less effective than guerrilla campaigns against military targets at inducing government concessions. The negative political effect of terrorism is evident across logit model specifications after carefully controlling for tactical confounds. Drawing on political psychology, the author concludes with a theory to account for why governments resist compliance when their civilians are targeted.

This Chapter briefly introduces the concepts of Integrative Bargaining and Distributive Bargaining, and then goes on to weigh one against the other. Finally, it proceeds to recommend a mixed technique of negotiation which involves the best elements of both tactics.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/integrative-bargaining-versus-distributive-vedant-prusty/

In this PhD thesis, the issue of the development of Roman citizenship for women in the late Republic and the early Empire is explored. Roman women as citizens are often marginalised, both in ancient sources and in definitions of citizenship in modern-day research. By looking at the legal construction of Roman citizenship, and the social consequences of this construction, in this study it is shown not only that women were citizens, but that the definitions of Roman citizenship in some ways crossed gender boundaries. Roman citizenship was based on the position of individual Romans within the familia, the Roman family group. It was this familia which could both limit and enlarge the bargaining power of Roman women; in particular, the position of Roman women who were sui iuris, the head of their own familia, was stronger than that of many Roman men. This study not only offers a novel interpretation of the way women functioned as Roman citizens, it also shows that Romans used a different organizing principle for their citizens from the ones we are familiar with in later Western history.

In this study, a detailed analysis of Porter five forces of oil and gas industry has been conducted. Porter five force analysis of oil and gas industry revealed many key aspects for a new entrant to make its competitive strategy and for the other firms which are already operating in the industry. The basic purpose of this study was to understand the relation between the external forces, external environment, profitability and the competitive strategy of the industry. The study also presented a detailed analysis of the current situation of the industry and the factors which are causing its profitability and those which are likely to change its profitability in near future.

A bargaining theoretical model on the Iranian nuclear crisis is presented in our study with particular emphasis on U.S.-Iranian relations. We argue that until 2013 minimal costs of bargaining failure made it hardly possible for the contending states to identify an appropriate bargaining space. Additionally, strong mutual mistrust escalated the commitment problem. Both factors contribute to our understanding of repeatedly failed negotiations during this period. In turn, a sharp increase in costs, mainly due to the increasing impact of sanctions, as well as successful attempts to reduce mutual mistrust facilitated a first deal on the restriction and verification of Iranian nuclear activities (the Joint Plan of Action) negotiated in November 2013 in Geneva.

Keywords: Bargaining Theory, Iran, NPT, Mistrust, Commitment Problem

Conceptually located between decision analysis and game theory, the emergent field of "negotiation analysis" seeks to develop prescriptive theory and useful advice for negotiators and third parties. It generally emphasizes assessment of the parties' underlying interests, alternatives to negotiated agreement, approaches to productively manage the inherent tension between competitive actions to "claim" value individually and cooperative ones to "create" value jointly, as well as efforts to change perceptions of the negotiation itself. Since advice to one side does not necessarily presume the full (game-theoretic) rationality of the other side(s), negotiation analysts often draw on the findings of behavioral scientists and experimental economists. Further, this approach does not generally assume that all the elements of the negotiation or "game" are common knowledge. It tends to de-emphasize the application of game-theoretic solution concepts or efforts to find unique equilibrium outcomes. Instead, to evaluate possible strategies and tactics, negotiation analysts generally focus on changes in perceptions of the "zone of possible agreement" and the (subjective) distribution of possible negotiated outcomes conditional on various actions. It has been used to develop prescriptive advice for the simplest bilateral negotiations between monolithic parties, for negotiations through agents or with linked "internal" and "external" aspects, for negotiations in hierarchies and networks, for more complex coalitional interactions, as well as moves "away from the table" to change the perceived negotiation itself, including the challenge of "negotiation design" to enhance the likelihood of desirable outcomes.

Purpose – This paper aims to identify and discuss four major sources of power in negotiations. Findings – The four sources of power are alternatives, information, status and social capital. Each of these sources of power can enhance a negotiator's likelihood of obtaining their ideal outcome because power allows negotiators to be more confident and proactive, and it shields them from the bargaining tactics of their opponents. Practical implications – The paper discusses how negotiators can utilize each source of power to improve their negotiation outcomes. Originality/value – The paper provides a parsimonious definition of power in negotiations, identifies the four major sources of negotiator powers and highlights two pathways by which power affects negotiation outcomes.

"This paper applies the insights of obsolescing bargaining theory to a situation in which a host country interacted with both multinational corporations and an international organization, the
World Bank. Drawing on resource curse literature and the Rubinstein bargaining model, we demonstrate the continued usefulness of obsolescing bargaining theory by explaining why the World Bank had to renegotiate its initial bargain with Chad in the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project. The paper explores how specific bargaining parameters changed over time in this case and suggests how resource curse dynamics and their impact on domestic politics might be particularly relevant for bargaining between host countries and international actors. The case study serves as a warning to international financial institutions and corporations alike with regard to the ways in
which obsolescing bargains can arise in the contemporary global political-economy."

Implicit in the rationalist literature on bargaining over the last half-century is the political utility of violence. Given our anarchical international system populated with egoistic actors, violence is thought to promote concessions by lending credibility to their threats. From the vantage of bargaining theory, then, empirical research on terrorism poses a puzzle. For nonstate actors, terrorism signals a credible threat in comparison with less extreme tactical alternatives. In recent years, however, a spate of studies across disciplines and methodologies has nonetheless found that neither escalating to terrorism nor with terrorism encourages government concessions. In fact, perpetrating terrorist acts reportedly lowers the likelihood of government compliance, particularly as the civilian casualties rise. The apparent tendency for this extreme form of violence to impede concessions challenges the external validity of bargaining theory, as traditionally understood. In this study, I propose and test an important psychological refinement to the standard rationalist narrative. Via an experiment on a national sample of adults, I find evidence of a newfound cognitive heuristic undermining the coercive logic of escalation enshrined in bargaining theory. Due to this oversight, mainstream bargaining theory overestimates the political utility of violence, particularly as an instrument of coercion.

The Brexit negotiations present a puzzle for scholars of international bargaining, who tend to assume hard bargaining follows from advantages in bargaining power. In spite of its relative weakness vis-à-vis the EU27, however, the UK’s negotiating strategy bears all the hallmarks of hard bargaining. Drawing upon a series of elite interviews conducted in late 2017, this working paper argues that British hard bargaining is a consequence of three ideational factors particular to the UK case: the dominance of a conservative ideology of statecraft, a majoritarian institutional culture, and weak socialisation into European structures. These three factors not only predisposed UK policymakers to favour harder bargaining strategies, ceteris paribus, but also contributed to a misperception that Britain possessed more bargaining power than was actually the case. This paper argues that the UK’s bargaining strategy comes with a high risk of immediate failure, as well as longer term self-harm.

A strong authoritarian state such as China has a range of institutions and instruments at its disposal to resolve social conflicts. This study proposes a new mechanism—citizen's engagement of a profit-seeking intermediary—that helps to facilitate state-society bargaining, resolve conflicts and thereby absorb social contention. This form of state-society bargaining is conducted via professional brokers whose objective is to make a profit from the transactions. By establishing trust between the officials and citizen, the broker brings the two parties together, enables and facilitates state-society bargaining that would not have taken place otherwise. In so doing, the broker helps to resolve conflicts or protracted stand-offs that might have spilled into street protest. These profit-seekers represent commodification of state-society bargaining by matching demands from discontented citizens with supplies of special favours by state officials. This study contributes to the growing body of conflict resolution and state repression literature in China.

Este artigo realizará, a partir de revisão bibliográfica, análise crítica do modelo de justiça criminal negocial proposto pelo projeto de Código de Processo Penal (PLS 156/09), denominado " procedimento sumário ". Partindo-se da delimitação introdutória dos conceitos de barganha e processo penal consensual, desenvolver-se-á estudo das características principais de tal modelo, a partir do exemplo estadunidense da plea bargaining e do mecanismo projetado pelo PLS 156/09. Com base nisso, apresentar-se-ão críticas que envolvem a expansão da justiça criminal negocial no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro, as quais configuram problemáticas que esvaziam por completo premissas essenciais do processo penal de um Estado democrático de Direito. Assim, partindo-se do exemplo do " procedimento sumário " do referido projeto, apontar-se-á a ilegitimidade da barganha como instituto consensual na justiça criminal, desvelando-se a incontornável inconstitucionalidade do referido mecanismo.

Little is known about how accurately individuals perceive externalities and how their perception affects bargaining behavior. This paper uses the setting of an unregulated taxi system in Lima, Peru to analyze taxi drivers’ ability to transfer congestion costs into higher fares. In unregulated taxi systems, taxi drivers and customers bargain over trip fares. When congestion increases, travel times also increase. In this context, parties bargain over who pays the larger share of the uncertain congestion costs. The experiment involved professional commuters hailing taxis and negotiating fares at different times of day between specific locations with randomly assigned alternative route treatments. A total of 1100 trips were conducted following the same bargaining protocol, from which taxi fares, travel times, and routing decisions were collected. Results show that taxi drivers increase fares according to route expected travel times, but they do not increase fares enough to prevent earnings per minute from decreasing. Fares for congested trips are one-third lower than metered fare constructed estimates. Experienced drivers learn to avoid congested routes by detouring to longer but speedier ones made out of smaller streets. These results highlight that unregulated taxi systems are successful at generating incentives for taxi drivers to make optimal routing decisions, but do not at improve drivers’ ability to transfer congestion costs into higher fares.

It seems natural to think that compromises ought to be fair. But it is false. In this paper, I argue that it is never a moral desideratum to reach fair compromises and that we are sometimes even morally obligated to try to establish unfair compromises. The most plausible conception of the fairness of compromises is David Gauthier's principle of minimax relative concession. According to that principle, a compromise is fair when all parties make equal concessions relative to how much they can gain from an agreement and relative to how much they would lose without an agreement. To find out whether reaching a fair compromise sometimes is a moral desideratum, I discuss several paradigmatic cases in friendships, economics and politics, and I try to show that even when the parties have moral reasons to refrain from trying to maximize utility in the negotiations, they do not have moral reasons to aim at a fair compromise. My second claim is that we are sometimes morally obligated to try to establish unfair compromises, in particular when we are dealing with parties that try to establish morally very bad political arrangements. In such cases, we should try to concede as little as possible to achieve an outcome that is morally acceptable. Fair compromises, in other words, are morally much more dubious than is usually appreciated.

Driven by the low transaction costs and interactive nature of the internet, customer participation in the price-setting process has increased. Today, platforms such as eBay have popularized online auctions on a global scale, Priceline has made headlines with its name-your-own-price (NYOP) business model, and Humble Bundle has enabled independent musicians and game developers to market their works through pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing. Advertising exchanges conduct several hundred million individual auctions per day to sell online advertising slots. The present paper contributes to the literature on participative pricing in three ways. First, we propose a definition of participative pricing mechanisms, as well as a useful taxonomy. Second, we discuss the current understanding by synthesizing conceptual and empirical academic literature. Third, we outline promising research questions with a key focus on the related behavioral aspects of buyers and sellers.

Although community development by elected local bodies is considered to promote pro-poor development, there is little systematic evidence on what forces shape elected leaders' distributional decisions and how communities influence their leaders' choices. This paper presents findings from a mixed-method study examining elected leaders' decision making on development in one community, investigating whether wealth or kinship-based representation to the elected body exerted a stronger effect on leaders. Findings suggest that electoral institutions based on kinship exercised a significant effect on leaders while wealth did not, suggesting that electoral politics may mitigate elite capture because it institutionalizes representational decision making.

Vivoda, for their moral and financial support throughout the preparation of this book. Moreover, lengthy telephone discussions with my dad and his wholehearted help with getting hold of a lot of relevant literature were very important. My mum's encouragement and support over the phone also played an important role throughout the research and writing of this book. I would like to thank Richard Leaver, for his intellectual guidance, inspiration, friendship, and support. Richard, a great expert on oil, was always there for me if I had any questions. My access to his comprehensive private library provided me with countless old and new books on oil and on bargaining. His help in providing me with casual tutoring, marking, and lecturing opportunities, which later brought all too important additional funding, is also highly appreciated. A big thank you goes to James Manicom, Alex Stephens, and Terry O'Callaghan for proofreading previous drafts, and offering me invaluable advice. Moreover, James, our countless chats over coffee were very helpful, and so were numerous articles and links that you sent me via e-mail. Thanks mate! My thanks also go to the CEO of my father's company, Endika Aboitiz, for financial help. This help came at a very important time, when I was facing financial hardship. I also thank John Fitzpatrick for excellent advice regarding my theoretical framework. His thoughtful suggestions and explanations are highly appreciated. I would also like to thank various academic and administrative staff at the School of Politics and International Studies (SPIS) at Flinders for attending my SPIS seminars and providing valuable comments; offering vital casual employment; and great administrative support. My particular thanks goes to Andrew O'Neil, but also to

When states come to believe that other states are hostile to their interests, they often reorient their foreign policies by realigning alliance commitments, building arms, striking first, mobilizing troops, or adopting policies to drain the resources of states that menace them. This article presents a crisis bargaining model that allows threatened states a wider array of responses than the choice to back down or not. Two implications are that (1) “cheap talk” diplomatic statements by adversaries can affect perceptions of intentions, and (2) war can occur because resolved states decline to communicate
their intentions, even though they could, and even though doing so would avoid a war. The model relates the content and quality of diplomatic signals to the context of prior beliefs about intentions and strategic options. In simulations, this form of diplomatic communication reduces the likelihood of conflict.

1 Einführung Aber das größte und hervorragendste Recht im Staat ist mit der Stellung (auctoritas) der Auguren verbunden. So beurteile ich das aber nicht, weil ich selbst Augur bin, sondern weil diese Einschätzung zwangsläufig ist. Denn was wäre größer -wenn wir nach Rechten fragen -, als die durch höchste Befehle und höchste Ämter geleiteten Abstimmungs-oder Beratungsversammlungen des Volkes aufschieben zu können, wenn sie schon angefangen, oder annullieren zu können, wenn sie schon abgehalten wurden? Was schwerwiegender, als daß eine in Angriff genommene Sache unterbrochen wird, wenn ein einziger Augur "ein andermal" sagte? Was großartiger, als entscheiden zu können, daß Konsuln abdanken? Was ehrwürdiger (religiosius), als das Verhandlungsrecht mit Volk oder Plebs zu gewähren oder nicht zu gewähren? Was, ein Gesetz, das nicht rechtmäßig verabschiedet wurde, aufzuheben, wie das Titische [99 v. Chr.] durch einen Beschluß des Kollegiums, wie die Livischen [91 v. Chr.] auf den Rat des Konsuls und Augurs Philippus hin? Daß nichts, was im Innern, nichts was im Äußern durch Beamte getan wurde, ohne deren Zustimmung (auctoritas) irgend jemandem gültig erscheinen kann? (Cic. leg. 2,31) Diese Aussage Ciceros in De legibus ist kein Programm, sondern Beschreibung, und -bei aller Einseitigkeiteine richtige Beschreibung. Divination stellt ein zentrales Element vieler Gesellschaften und ihrer politischen Systeme dar, nicht ein Überbleibsel evolutionär überwundener Religionsstufen. Daher eignet sie sich auch in besonderer Weise, den Versuch einer Kontextualisierung eines Ritualbereichs zu unternehmen, der mehrere prominente priesterliche Institutionen umschließt.

We explore the properties of voting rules and procedures employed by appellate courts in the US. Our model features: (1) a two-stage decision-making process (first over case disposition, then over majority opinion content), (2) dispositional consistency (the new rule must yield the Court's indicated case disposition when applied to the instant case), (3) restricted bargaining entrée (only members of the winning dispositional coalition bargain over policy), (4) competitive offers (potentially many competitive majority opinions), and (5) absolute majority in joins (a majority of the court must endorse the rule in the majority opinion if it is to have precedential power). We show that the median judge is pivotal over case dispositions, although she (and others) may not vote sincerely. Strategic voting becomes more likely as the location of the case becomes more extreme, resulting in majority coalitions that give the appearance of less polarization on the court, than is truly the case. The equilibrium policy depends on the composition of the dispositional majority, and generically does not coincide with the ideal policy of the median judge either in the dispositional majority or the bench as a whole. Rather, opinions are drawn toward a weighted center of the dispositional majority but often reflect the preferences of the opinion author.

This chapter develops a method for analyzing bargaining problems in which the bargainers are uncertain about the performance of alternative bargaining outcomes. Monte-Carlo selection is combined with fallback bargaining (FB) in order to map the stochastic bargaining problem into many deterministic bargaining problems which can be analyzed using various fallback bargaining methods, namely unanimity FB, q-approval FB, and FB with impasse. The proposed method is applied to the California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta benchmark problem. In this problem the stakeholders need to reach an agreement over a water export strategy to address the current crisis in the Delta. This problem is modeled here as a bargaining game in which the environmentalists and water exporters develop a resolution through a bargaining process while the performances of different water export alternatives are uncertain. The analysis results are consistent with the findings of other studies using different decision analysis methods to analyze this multi-decision maker problem. Construction of a peripheral canal or a dual conveyance is expected if the parties change their cooperation attitudes, trying to benefit from a low level of cooperation in solving the Delta problems.

In important conflicts such as wars and labor-management disputes, people typically rely on the judgment of experts to predict the decisions that will be made. We compared the accuracy of 106 forecasts by experts and 169 forecasts by novices about eight real conflicts. The forecasts of experts who used their unaided judgment were little better than those of novices. Moreover, neither group’s forecasts were much more accurate than simply guessing. The forecasts of experienced experts were no more accurate than the forecasts of those with less experience. The experts were nevertheless confident in the accuracy of their forecasts. Speculating that consideration of the relative frequency of decisions across similar conflicts might improve accuracy, we obtained 89 sets of frequencies from novices instructed to assume there were 100 similar situations. Forecasts based on the frequencies were no more accurate than 96 forecasts from novices asked to pick the single most likely decision. We conclude that expert judgment should not be used for predicting decisions that people will make in conflicts.
When decision makers ask experts for their opinions, they are likely to overlook other, more useful, approaches.

The essay begins with a short account of how the problems of bargaining are historically situated in the uneven development of capitalism. It then focuses on the genre of bargaining as differently understood and described by economists and linguistic anthropologists. Through a discussion of Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic capital’ and its relationship to material capital, the essay discusses the theoretical gap between the narratives. Using this theoretical framework, the essay analyzes data derived from linguistic methodology to illustrate the divergence of economic and linguistic approaches, stressing the different interpretations of cooperation and antagonism that reproduce the ideological assumptions of each discipline. The discussion then turns to the metaphor of gaming and play, a metaphor that has been used incompatibly by each discipline to attempt to generalize its conclusions for social theory as a whole. The connection between bargaining and gaming is discussed in connection with the potential that either ‘symbolic capital’ or material capital may holistically describe the realities of social interactions that are simultaneously economic and symbolic. This paper will conclude with suggestions for the possible directions of further research toward a holistic understanding of bargaining.

Children's enrollment and school attainment are critical issues as it is at such a stage of their development that children acquire competencies that determine their future. Therefore, understanding the determinants of enrollment and school attainment is important, especially in rural setting where communities face existential challenges. This paper investigates the factors of children's enrollment and school attainment in a rural environment using a probit and ordered multinominal logit models. The sample size is 1,151 children from randomly selected households in the Plateau district in Benin (West Africa). We found that children living with their parents, in large and endowed households (assets-based metric) are more likely to be enrolled and achieve higher grade. Also, girls are observed to be disadvantaged in comparison to boys in terms of schooling and grade attainment. Both parents' levels of education present positive significant effect on grade attainment. By co...