An Economic Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution - Case Study: Mediation in Poland

The topic of this paper is economic analysis of mediation in civil, commercial, labor, family and administrative matters. Main aims are focused on: 1) to present mediation as a viable, reasonable and faster alternative to judicial dispute resolution; 2) to analyse social costs of mediation; 3) the analysis of the use of mediation in Poland and its effectiveness. In the article have been used desk research analysis and analysis of statistical data on the number of cases referred to administrative courts and common courts and the number of cases referred to mediation. The results of the study confirm that mediation is much cheaper and cost-efficient compared to the dispute resolved by a court. Although mediation often provides a speedy resolution to a specific dispute, the level of use of mediation both in administrative and common courts is low. The number of cases referred to mediation does not exceed even 1% of all cases considered by the Polish courts. It becomes apparent that mediation is not utilized as much as traditional adjudicative processes.