IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v21y2005i2p467-500.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Kay Mitusch
  • Roland Strausz

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 nonbinding 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 nonmonotonically on the degree of conflict. Our insights extend to general models of contracting with imperfect commitment. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Kay Mitusch & Roland Strausz, 2005. "Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 467-500, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:21:y:2005:i:2:p:467-500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewi018
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roger B. Myerson, 1983. "Bayesian Equilibrium and Incentive-Compatibility: An Introduction," Discussion Papers 548, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1990. "Adverse Selection and Renegotiation in Procurement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(4), pages 597-625.
    3. Drew Fudenberg & David Levine & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem With Imperfect Public Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 12, pages 231-273, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Forges, Francoise, 1988. "Can sunspots replace a mediator?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 347-368, September.
    5. Forges, Francoise M, 1986. "An Approach to Communication Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(6), pages 1375-1385, November.
    6. Matthews, Steven A. & Postlewaite, Andrew, 1989. "Pre-play communication in two-person sealed-bid double auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 238-263, June.
    7. Myerson, Roger B, 1986. "Multistage Games with Communication," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 323-358, March.
    8. Françoise Forges, 1990. "Equilibria with Communication in a Job Market Example," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 375-398.
    9. Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2003. "Long Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1619-1660, November.
      • Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2002. "Long Cheap Talk," Discussion Paper Series dp284, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, revised Nov 2002.
    10. Kay Mitusch & Roland Strausz, "undated". "Mediators and Mechanism Design: Why Firms Hire Consultants," Papers 005, Departmental Working Papers.
    11. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    12. Baker, George & Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1999. "Informal Authority in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 56-73, April.
    13. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Procurement and Renegotiation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 235-259, April.
    14. Oliver D. Hart & Jean Tirole, 1988. "Contract Renegotiation and Coasian Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(4), pages 509-540.
    15. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "The Dynamics of Incentive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1153-1175, September.
    16. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goltsman, Maria & Hörner, Johannes & Pavlov, Gregory & Squintani, Francesco, 2009. "Mediation, arbitration and negotiation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1397-1420, July.
    2. Deffains, Bruno & Demougin, Dominique & Desrieux, Claudine, 2017. "Choosing ADR or litigation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 33-40.
    3. Strausz, Roland, 2012. "Mediated contracts and mechanism design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1280-1290.
    4. Krahmer, Daniel, 2006. "Message-contingent delegation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 490-506, August.
    5. Rossella Argenziano & Sergei Severinov & Francesco Squintani, 2016. "Strategic Information Acquisition and Transmission," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 119-155, August.
    6. Berthomé, Guy-El-Karim & Thomas, Alban, 2017. "A Context-based Procedure for Assessing Participatory Schemes in Environmental Planning," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 113-123.
    7. Bester, Helmut & Strausz, Roland, 2007. "Contracting with imperfect commitment and noisy communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 236-259, September.
    8. Ivanov, Maxim, 2014. "Beneficial mediated communication in cheap talk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 129-135.
    9. Mitusch, Kay, 2006. "Non-commitment in performance evaluation and the problem of information distortions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 507-525, August.
    10. Goltsman, Maria & Pavlov, Gregory, 2011. "How to talk to multiple audiences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 100-122, May.
    11. Dominic Rohner, 2018. "Success Factors for Peace Treaties: A Review of Theory and Evidence," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 18.08, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    12. Doornik, Katherine, 2014. "A rationale for mediation and its optimal use," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 1-10.
    13. Kohei Kawamura, 2007. "Constrained Communication with Multiple Agents: Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Public Good Provision," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 166, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    14. Kohei Kawamura, 2006. "Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Overconfidence: Constraints on Communication May Enhance Information Transmission," Economics Series Working Papers 268, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Li Ming, 2010. "Advice from Multiple Experts: A Comparison of Simultaneous, Sequential, and Hierarchical Communication," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-24, April.
    16. Blume, Andreas & Lai, Ernest K. & Lim, Wooyoung, 2019. "Eliciting private information with noise: The case of randomized response," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 356-380.
    17. Maria Goltsman, 2011. "Optimal information transmission in a holdup problem," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(3), pages 495-526, September.
    18. Pinghan Liang, 2010. "Transfer of Authority within Hierarchy," Levine's Working Paper Archive 661465000000000139, David K. Levine.
    19. Christmann Robin, 2015. "Tipping the Scales – Settlement, Appeal and the Relevance of Judicial Ambition," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 171-207, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kay Mitusch & Roland Strausz, 2000. "Mediation in Situations of Conflict," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0361, Econometric Society.
    2. Bester, Helmut & Strausz, Roland, 2007. "Contracting with imperfect commitment and noisy communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 236-259, September.
    3. Vasiliki Skreta, 2000. "Sequentially Optimal Mechanisms," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1521, Econometric Society.
    4. Roland Strausz, 2006. "Interim Information in Long‐Term Contracts," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(4), pages 1041-1067, December.
    5. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 2004. "The art of conversation: eliciting information from experts through multi-stage communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 147-179, August.
    6. Blume, Andreas, 2012. "A class of strategy-correlated equilibria in sender–receiver games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 510-517.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5279 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Faure-Grimaud, Antoine & Reiche, Sönje Kerrin, 2003. "Dynamic Yardstick Regulation," CEPR Discussion Papers 4035, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. , & ,, 2013. "Implementation of communication equilibria by correlated cheap talk: The two-player case," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), January.
    10. Battaglini, Marco, 2007. "Optimality and renegotiation in dynamic contracting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 213-246, August.
    11. Forges, Francoise & Koessler, Frederic, 2005. "Communication equilibria with partially verifiable types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 793-811, November.
    12. Forges, Françoise & Koessler, Frédéric, 2008. "Long persuasion games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 1-35, November.
    13. Drew Fudenberg, 2015. "Tirole's Industrial Regulation and Organization Legacy in Economics," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(3), pages 771-800, July.
    14. Marco Battaglini, 2005. "Long-Term Contracting with Markovian Consumers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 637-658, June.
    15. Antoine Faure-Grimaud & Soenje Reiche, 2003. "Dynamic Yardstick Regulation," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series 459, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    16. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2014. "Market power and regulation (scientific background)," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2014-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    17. R. Vijay Krishna, 2004. "Communication in Games of Incomplete Information: The Two-player Case," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 125, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    18. Chirantan Ganguly & Indrajit Ray, 2023. "Simple Mediation in a Cheap-Talk Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-14, June.
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/8159 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Helmut Bester & Roland Strausz, "undated". "Imperfect Commitment and the Revelation Principle," Papers 004, Departmental Working Papers.
    21. Gerardi, Dino, 2004. "Unmediated communication in games with complete and incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 104-131, January.
    22. Skreta, Vasiliki, 2015. "Optimal auction design under non-commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 854-890.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:21:y:2005:i:2:p:467-500. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.