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Making Peace And Making Money: Economic Analysis Of The Market For Mediators In Private Practice, Urska Velikonja

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation has grown tremendously in the last three decades, yet only a small number of mediators have been able to benefit financially from its growth. The supply of willing mediators by far exceeds the demand for their services. Mediator trainee overoptimism and the lack of formal barriers to entry result in excess entry in the market for mediators. However, the lack of a formal barrier, but the existence of de facto barriers to entry, such as mediator selection practices and specialization, combined with excessive individual optimism, creates inefficiently high levels of entry. This is socially suboptimal: many aspirant mediators spend …