DOES DISPUTING THROUGH AGENTS ENHANCE COOPERATION - EXPERIMENTAL-EVIDENCE

A distinctive characteristic of our mechanisms for conflict resolution is that litigation is carried out by agents chosen by disputing princ ipals. Does the fact that clients choose lawyers to carry on their dis putes facilitate dispute resolution or instead exacerbate conflict? Th e dominant contemporary view is that the involvement of lawyers magnif ies the contentiousness of litigation and wastes social resources, pro longing and escalating the conflict in ways that enrich the legal prof ession but not the clients. But in a recent article, Ronald Gilson and Robert Mnookin suggest another possibility: by choosing lawyers with reputations for cooperation, clients may commit to cooperative litigat ion in circumstances where the clients themselves would not otherwise trust each other. Using the methodology of experimental economics, thi s article presents a test of their idea that, by choosing cooperative agents under well-specified procedures, principals may sustain more co operation than they could on their own. Our experimental findings are consistent with the Gilson-Mnookin hypothesis.