Comparative Arbitration Procedures: The Role of Expectations in Dispute Rates

议价分歧的代价往往相当高昂，因此需要彻底了解议价失败的决定因素以及解决纠纷的不同程序的有效性。本研究将研究仲裁程序，而本研究的一个主要目的是考察不同仲裁形式下的争议解决。也就是说，不同的仲裁规则是如何影响议价结果的？本研究将探讨一个创新的仲裁程序，以及目前使用的程序。利用这一创新程序来研究争端解决是很重要的，因为理论上它有望比目前在实践中使用的程序更有效地解决争端。本研究亦将探讨讨价还价者预期在纠纷中所扮演的角色。如果谈判者以一种乐观的方式看待关于可能的仲裁和解的信息（即，每个谈判者对可能的和解的看法都偏向于他/她），那么这些乐观的预期可能会显著地促进谈判者仲裁而不是谈判他们自己的和解的可能性。具体来说，理论上可以证明，乐观的期望可能会逆转本项目中研究的仲裁程序中从最低效到最高效的排序。本研究将使用受控的实验室讨价还价环境来检查上述问题，该环境允许在讨价还价僵局中操纵议价者期望和仲裁规则。付费的实验室受试者会就一个通用变量的价值进行谈判（即，为实验室环境创造的价值项目），这对一个讨价还价者产生较高的谈判价值，但对另一个讨价还价者产生较高的谈判价值。因此，在谈判的潜在回报方面，实验室创造了利益冲突（即争议）。固定长度的谈判回合将在不同回合中使用不同的仲裁规则集来解决回合结束时遗留的争议。实验环境还将通过提供一种更精炼（和客观）的形式的信息来操纵受试者的期望，这些信息是关于在一半的实验中讨价还价对可能的仲裁解决方案的信息。对本研究结果的统计分析将揭示哪种仲裁程序在限制纠纷方面最有效，并将确定议价者期望的单独贡献。

Bargaining disagreements are often quite costly, and so a thorough understanding of the determinants of bargaining failure and the effectiveness of different procedures to resolve disputes is needed. This research will study arbitration procedures, and one key objective of this research is to examine dispute resolution under different forms of arbitration. That is, how do different arbitration rules affect bargaining outcomes? This research will examine an innovative arbitration procedure as well as currently used procedures. It is important to investigate dispute resolution with this innovative procedure because it theoretically promises to resolve disputes more effectively than procedures currently used in practice. This research will also investigate the role that bargainer expectations play in disputes. If bargainers view information about likely arbitration settlements in an optimistic way (i.e., each bargainer's perceptions of likely settlements are biased in his/her favor), then these optimistic expectations may significantly contribute to the likelihood that the bargainers will arbitration rather than negotiate their own settlement. Specifically, one can show theoretically that optimistic expectations will likely reverse the ordering of least to most effective arbitration procedure from among those studied in this project. This research will examine the aforementioned issues using a controlled laboratory bargaining environment that allows for manipulation of bargainer expectations and arbitration rules used at bargaining impasse. Paid laboratory subjects will negotiate over the value of a generic variable (i.e., the item of value created for the lab environment), which generates higher payoffs to one bargainer for lower negotiated values but higher payoffs to the other bargainer for higher negotiated values of the variable. As such, the lab creates a conflict of interest (i.e., a dispute) in terms of payoff potential in the negotiations. Bargaining rounds of fixed length will utilize different sets of arbitrations rules in different rounds to resolve disputes that remain at the end of the round. The experimental environment will also manipulate subject expectations by providing a more distilled (and objective) form of information about likely arbitrated settlements for bargaining pairs in half of the experiments. Statistical analysis of the results from this research will reveal which arbitration procedure is most effective at limiting disputes and will also identify the separate contribution of bargainer expectations.