Bargaining and the Role of Expert Agents: An Empirical Study of Final-Offer Arbitration
利用新泽西州18年的最终报价仲裁数据，研究专家代理人（如律师）对冲突解决结果的影响，发现双方都雇佣代理人时收益相互抵消，导致帕累托低效的非合作均衡。
Expert agents, such as lawyers, play a prominent role in conflict resolution, yet little is known about how they affect outcomes. We construct a model that permits us to estimate the influence of agents and test whether the parties in a dispute face prisoner's dilemma incentives. Using eighteen years of final-offer arbitration data from New Jersey, we find the parties do significantly better when they retain agents and that the parties learn about this benefit over time. However, we also find that the gain to using an agent is fully offset when the opposing party also hires an agent. Since agents are costly, this noncooperative equilibrium is Pareto inferior. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.