Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economics Research Institute Study Paper

Volume

1

Publisher

Utah State University Department of Economics

Publication Date

2003

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

22

Abstract

This article examines the incentive effects of final-offer arbitration (FOA) in the presence of optimistic disputants. Common disputant expectations about the likely arbitrator settlement preferences are not a necessary condition for equilibrium final offers. It is shown that equilibrium final offers can exist under at least two forms of disputant optimism: naIve optimism and more sophisticated beliefs. Additionally, equilibrium final offers diverge more when disputants are optimistic than when they are not, and even more when optimism is naIve as opposed to sophisticated. The implication is that FOA rules, though instituted to lessen the "chilling" effect of arbitration on negotiations, interact with optimistic beliefs in a way that worsens the chilling effect. Data from controlled laboratory experiments confirm that optimistic expectations increase the distance between the disputants' final bargaining positions as well as the probability of dispute. These results highlight the importance of improving disputant expectations as an effective way of improving bargaining outcomes.

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