# How Well Can LLMs Negotiate? NegotiationArena Platform and Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.05863 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05863/

## Key facts

- Cited by 100 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 16 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [GLUE: A Multi-Task Benchmark and Analysis Platform for Natural Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.07461/) (2018)
- [Using Large Language Models to Simulate Multiple Humans and Replicate Human Subject Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10264/) (2022)
- [SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11667/) (2023)
- [Playing repeated games with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16867/) (2023)
- [Improving Language Model Negotiation with Self-Play and In-Context Learning from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10142/) (2023)
- [Decoupling Strategy and Generation in Negotiation Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.09637/) (2018)
- [Compositionality and Generalization in Emergent Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09124/) (2020)
- [Suspicion-Agent: Playing Imperfect Information Games with Theory of Mind Aware GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17277/) (2023)
- [Emergent Communication through Negotiation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03980/) (2018)
- [CaSiNo: A Corpus of Campsite Negotiation Dialogues for Automatic Negotiation Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15721/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Language Model Agency through Negotiations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04536/) (2024)
- [EGG: a toolkit for research on Emergence of lanGuage in Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00852/) (2019)
- [Improving Dialog Systems for Negotiation with Personality Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09954/) (2020)
- [Let's Negotiate! A Survey of Negotiation Dialogue Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09072/) (2022)
- [Negotiating with LLMS: Prompt Hacks, Skill Gaps, and Reasoning Deficits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03720/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 100)

- [Agentic Large Language Models, a survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23037/) (2025)
- [Game-theoretic LLM: Agent Workflow for Negotiation Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05990/) (2024)
- [SiriuS: Self-improving Multi-agent Systems via Bootstrapped Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04780/) (2025)
- [Richelieu: Self-Evolving LLM-Based Agents for AI Diplomacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06813/) (2024)
- [Persuade Me if You Can: A Framework for Evaluating Persuasion Effectiveness and Susceptibility Among Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01829/) (2025)
- [Social Science Meets LLMs: How Reliable Are Large Language Models in Social Simulations?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23426/) (2024)
- [SocialMind: LLM-based Proactive AR Social Assistive System with Human-like Perception for In-situ Live Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04036/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model-Based Social Agents in Game-Theoretic Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03920/) (2024)
- [STRIDE: A Tool-Assisted LLM Agent Framework for Strategic and Interactive Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16376/) (2024)
- [MetaAgent: Automatically Constructing Multi-Agent Systems Based on Finite State Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22606/) (2025)
- [Drift No More? Context Equilibria in Multi-Turn LLM Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07777/) (2025)
- [Strength Lies in Differences! Improving Strategy Planning for Non-collaborative Dialogues via Diversified User Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06769/) (2024)
- [GLEE: A Unified Framework and Benchmark for Language-based Economic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05254/) (2024)
- [Magentic Marketplace: An Open-Source Environment for Studying Agentic Markets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25779/) (2025)
- [Quantifying and Optimizing Global Faithfulness in Persona-driven Role-playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07726/) (2024)
- [Game Theory Meets Large Language Models: A Systematic Survey with Taxonomy and New Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09053/) (2025)
- [MARSHAL: Incentivizing Multi-Agent Reasoning via Self-Play with Strategic LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15414/) (2025)
- [Lies, Damned Lies, and Distributional Language Statistics: Persuasion and Deception with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17128/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Social Learning via Mode Policy Optimization for Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02156/) (2025)
- [The Automated but Risky Game: Modeling and Benchmarking Agent-to-Agent Negotiations and Transactions in Consumer Markets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00073/) (2025)
- [Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22748/) (2026)
- [Modelling Political Coalition Negotiations Using LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11712/) (2024)
- [Dialogue Action Tokens: Steering Language Models in Goal-Directed Dialogue with a Multi-Turn Planner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11978/) (2024)
- [Evolution of Social Norms in LLM Agents using Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00993/) (2024)
- [ACE: A LLM-based Negotiation Coaching System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01555/) (2024)
- [Must Read: A Comprehensive Survey of Computational Persuasion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07775/) (2025)
- [AgenticPay: A Multi-Agent LLM Negotiation System for Buyer-Seller Transactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06008/) (2026)
- [EgoSocialArena: Benchmarking the Social Intelligence of Large Language Models from a First-person Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06195/) (2024)
- [SOTOPIA-S4: a user-friendly system for flexible, customizable, and large-scale social simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16122/) (2025)
- [Distributive Fairness in Large Language Models: Evaluating Alignment with Human Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00313/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Negotiation is the basis of social interactions; humans negotiate everything from the price of cars to how to share common resources. With rapidly growing interest in using large language models (LLMs) to act as agents on behalf of human users, such LLM agents would also need to be able to negotiate. In this paper, we study how well LLMs can negotiate with each other. We develop NegotiationArena: a flexible framework for evaluating and probing the negotiation abilities of LLM agents. We implemented three types of scenarios in NegotiationArena to assess LLM's behaviors in allocating shared resources (ultimatum games), aggregate resources (trading games) and buy/sell goods (price negotiations). Each scenario allows for multiple turns of flexible dialogues between LLM agents to allow for more complex negotiations. Interestingly, LLM agents can significantly boost their negotiation outcomes by employing certain behavioral tactics. For example, by pretending to be desolate and desperate, LLMs can improve their payoffs by 20% when negotiating against the standard GPT-4. We also quantify irrational negotiation behaviors exhibited by the LLM agents, many of which also appear in humans. Together, NegotiationArena offers a new environment to investigate LLM interactions, enabling new insights into LLM's theory of mind, irrationality, and reasoning abilities.