In Final Offer Arbitration, both parties submit a proposal to an arbitrator. In the event the parties cannot reach a negotiated settlement, the arbitrator chooses the submitted proposal that is closest to her preferred settlement. In such a model, asymmetric information can lead to costly...

We identify two features of final offer arbitration (FOA) which may impede settlement in a bargaining game where asymmetric information drives the failure to settle. First, under FOA the informed party has an incentive not to voluntarily reveal private information. Revealing this information...

We develop a signaling model of final offer arbitration (FOA) in which the informed party makes the final settlement demand to the uninformed party. In FOA, each party submits a proposal to an arbitrator and if no agreement is reached, the arbitrator must select one of the two submitted...

We develop screening models of final offer arbitration (FOA) in which the uninformed party makes a demand to the informed party. We consider models in which settlement occurs before and after the submission of binding offers, and in each we analyze costly discovery. Our results are compared to...

We develop a signaling model of final offer arbitration (FOA) in which the informed party makes the final settlement demand to the uninformed party. In FOA, each party submits a proposal to an arbitrator and if no agreement is reached, the arbitrator must select one of the two submitted...

We conduct an experimental analysis of final offer arbitration (FOA) with differentially informed players. Under FOA, the arbitrator must choose one of the two submitted offers. In our control, the uninformed player makes an offer to the informed player prior to the submission of offers to the...

Much of the law and economics literature, including Bebchuk (1984) and Reinganum and Wilde (1986), explains settlement failure in bargaining as a consequence of asymmetric information. An alternative, non-strategic explanation found in Shavell (1982) suggests that settlement failure stems from...

Under final offer arbitration (FOA), each party to the dispute submits a proposal to the arbitrator who must choose one of the two submitted proposals in the event of a dispute. A long line of research on FOA has assumed that the submitted proposals to the arbitrator are the final bargaining...

We conduct an experimental analysis of signaling games using three models of arbitration. In the signaling model, the informed party in the dispute makes a settlement demand to the uninformed party. In conventional arbitration (CA), the arbitrator is free to impose her preferred settlement. In...