Have your lawyer call my lawyer: Bilateral delegation in bargaining situations

Many bargaining situations involve simultaneous attempts to commit by the parties involved. This paper studies the consequences of bilateral commitment by delegation, modelling the parties' non-cooperative choice of negotiators at stage one contingent on the bargaining outcome these negotiators achieve at stage two. In a leading case, there is a unique interior Nash equilibrium where, except when tastes are identical, both parties genuinely delegate. Although one party may gain at the expense of the other by this process, relative to self-representation, it is often the case that both parties lose by such strategic manoeuvering.