AN EVALUATION OF DEPENDENT-VARIABLES IN EXPERIMENTAL NEGOTIATION STUDIES - IMPASSE RATES AND PARETO EFFICIENCY

We discuss the importance of appropriate measures of dyadic performance in negotiations research. We review how the quality of negotiated agreements has been measured in recent experimental research on mixed-motive, dyadic negotiations. We argue that impasse rates have been largely ignored as a dependent variable and that failure to take account of impasse rates may bias experimental results. In addition, we show that impasse rates can vary across experimental treatments as a result of differences in the balance of power. Pareto efficiency is argued to be a better measure of the quality of dyadic agreements than is joint profit, the more commonly used measure. We discuss the theoretical implications of these two measurements and show when they would lead to different conclusions. Finally, we evaluate alternative operationalizations of Pareto efficiency. © 1992.