This article opens up mediation to systematic economic analysis by considering mediators as analogous to the Walrasian auctioneers of exchange theory. By altering trade-off rates among bargaining issues, mediators facilitate a process leading towards Pareto efficient voluntary settlements.

Auction experiments at locations in the U.S. and Canada are used to determine consumers’ willingness to pay for red-meat traceability and other enhanced food characteristics. Consumers in both countries are found to be willing to pay a positive amount for traceability, but would pay even more...

This article reports the results from a series of laboratory auction markets in which consumers bid on meat characteristics. The characteristics examined include meat traceability (i.e., the ability to trace the retail meat back to the farm or animal or origin), transparency (e.g., knowing that...

Arbitration is a growing method of resolving disputes in varied settings. While two specific arbitration rules dominate in practice, other procedures have been hypothesized to better promote voluntary settlement. Such hypotheses require theoretical assumptions of identical bargainer expectations...

This paper presents results from a controlled laboratory study of bargaining behavior and dispute rates under three types of arbitration procedures. Two of these—conventional and final-offer arbitration—are commonly used in practice, while an innovative procedure called “Combined...

There has been growing interest within the economics discipline in the role of equity concerns in the distribution of resources. This paper presents empirical evidence from a series of controlled laboratory experiments where third-party decision-makers must allocate resources between two...

Some labor negotiations include a break in which a non-binding recommendation is made by a fact-finder as an intermediate dispute resolution procedure. There is some uncertainty, however, as to whether this fact-finding increases or reduces the likelihood of settlement. Inasmuch as fact-finding...

Traceable product systems provide a tool to track the inputs of a final good throughout the entire production chain. This tool can provide valuable information to consumers on verifiable characteristics of the product, can improve the speed of product recall, and can help identify areas of...

Statistical discrimination occurs when distinctions between demographic groups are made on the basis of real or imagined statistical distinctions between the groups. While such discrimination is legal in some cases (e.g., insurance markets), it is illegal and/or controversial in others (e.g.,...