Negotiation Analysis

This volume originated in a suggestion that Howard Raiffa put to me several years ago. As a teacher of negotiation analysis, he said he felt frustrated because there are many results in game theory, economics, and psychology that have a bearing on negotiation analysis, but that are inaccessible to most students and practitioners because they are presented in such a technical way. Although he had incorporated some of these subjects in his superb textbook, The Art and Science of Negotiation, much had been omitted. Furthermore, research in these topics has been developing so rapidly that many results had not been available when he wrote his book at the beginning of the decade. The question was how to remedy this situation. Could a group of people be found who were familiar with the technical literature and attuned to the needs of students in negotiations courses, and could they be persuaded to present some of these results for a nontechnical audience? I rose to the bait, and with Howard's encouragement and advice, organized a group of theoretically inclined teachers of negotiation to see if we could agree on a list of topics that would be suitable for presentation in this manner. This negotiation proved to be surprisingly painless, and the result is the set of articles contained in this volume.