Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment

Roland Strausz () and Kay Mitusch

Departmental Working Papers from Freie Universität, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Abstract: We study the reasons and conditions under which mediation is beneficial when a principal needs information from an agent to implement an action. Assuming a strong form of limited commitment, the principal may employ a mediator who gathers information and makes non--binding proposals. We show that a partial revelation of information is more effective through a mediator than through the agent himself. This implies that mediation is strictly helpful if and only if the likelihood of a conflict of interest is positive but not too high. The value of mediation depends non--monotonically on the degree of conflict. Our insights extend to general models of contracting with imperfect commitment.

Keywords: Mediation; Negotiation; Limited Commitment; Revelation Principle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-reg
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/%7Elsbester/papers/mediat.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment (2004)
Journal Article: Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bef:lsbest:023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Departmental Working Papers from Freie Universität, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by XXX ().