Empirical Models of Arbitrator Behavior Under Conventional Arbitration

David Bloom

No 1841, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This study analyzes a new set of data on the decisions of conventional arbitrators. The main goal is to draw inferences about the extent to which conventional arbitration decisions are fashioned as mechanical compromises of the parties' final offers, without reference to the exogenous facts involved, in different disputes. The results of the analysis are remarkably clear : conventional arbitrators tend to split-the-difference between the parties' final offers with virtually no evidence of systematic reference to the facts of the cases. However, since there is a substantial amount of unexplained variance in the arbitration decisions, this evidence of mechanical compromise behavior should be viewed as characterizing the overall operation of conventional arbitration mechanisms and not the behavior of individual arbitrators in any particular case. Indeed, the results are consistent with the view that individual arbitrators pay close attention to the facts of the cases, but that there is considerable variation in the structure of different arbitrators' preference functions.

Date: 1986-02
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Published as Bloom, David E. "Empirical Models of Arbitrator Behavior Under Conventional Arbitration," Review of Economics and Statistics, 1986.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1841.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1841

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1841

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().