Mediation, arbitration and negotiation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Goltsman, Maria; Hoerner, Johannes; Pavlov, Gregory; Squintani, Francesco
• 署名单位: Western University (University of Western Ontario); University of Brescia; University of Essex; Yale University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2008.08.010
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 1397-1420
• 关键词: communication; INFORMATION; mechanism design; cheap talk; Long cheap talk; ARBITRATION; Mediation; Negotiation

摘要

We compare three common dispute resolution processes - negotiation, mediation, and arbitration - in the framework of Crawford and Sobel [V. Crawford, J. Sobel, Strategic information transmission, Econometrica 50 (6) (1982) 1431-1451]. Under negotiation, the two parties engage in (possibly arbitrarily long) face-to-face cheap talk. Under mediation, the pat-ties communicate with a neutral third party who makes a non-binding recommendation. Under arbitration, the two parties commit to conform to the third party recommendation. We characterize and compare the optimal mediation and arbitration procedures. Both mediators and arbitrators should optimally filter information, but mediators should also add noise to it. We find that unmediated negotiation performs as well as mediation if and only if the degree of conflict between the parties is low. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.