Comparable Pareto Efficiency: A New Measurement of Value Creation in Negotiations and Quasi-meta-analytical Evidence

Abstract: Negotiation research shows that negotiators can create value in integrative negotiations, yet the magnitude of such value creation remains unclear. We introduce Comparable Pareto Efficiency (CPE), a new measure that pinpoints negotiators’ value-creating performance net of value-claiming components embedded in negotiation tasks, thereby enabling cross-study comparability despite heterogeneity in payoff structures. Using a quasi-meta-analytic dataset of role-playing negotiations published between 1975 and 2024 (k = 582 samples; N = 51228 negotiators), we find that human negotiators achieve substantial but incomplete value creation (0.75): outcomes significantly exceed random benchmarks (0.50) yet fall short of perfection (1.00). We also find that integrative potential of a negotiation task, rather than other structural factors (e.g., the number of issues, the number of options, etc.), significantly influences the magnitude of value creation, highlighting both human negotiators’ capabilities and their limits in realizing ideal win-win outcomes in integrative negotiations.

Keywords: Pareto efficiency; Joint gains; Integrative potential