5 research outputs found
Information acquisition and transparency in committees
Get PDFWe study an intertemporal model of committee decision-making where members differ in their levels of efficiency. They may acquire costly information that enhances their ability to make a correct decision. We focus on the impact of transparency. We show that the principal's initial utility is higher under transparency, because members exert more effort, which makes correct decisions more likely. The principal also benefits from transparency later, unless transparency leads to an alignment of the signal qualities of highly efficient and less efficient committee members. In general, committee members are harmed by transparency. Together with the insights from the literature, our results may help to decide when transparency in committees is desirabl
When collective ignorance is bliss: Theory and experiment on voting for learning
Get PDFWhen do groups and societies choose to be uninformed? We study a committee that needs to vote on a reform which will give every member a private state-dependent payoff. The committee can vote to learn the state at no cost. We show that the committee votes not to learn the state whenever independent voters are more divided than partisans. This implies that groups with conflicting preferences tend to seek less information. A laboratory experiment shows that committees are substantially more likely to vote against acquiring information when the theory predicts them to do so. We also observe deviations from theory that are largely explained by cognitive limitations. At the same time, subjects with more experience or with greater strategic competence are more likely to vote in line with the theory, providing evidence for external validity of the model.We thank Universidad del Rosario for hosting the experiment, and the financial support from Central Bank of Colombia grant 3754, Spanish Ministry of the Economy grant MDM 2014-0431, and Comunidad de Madrid grant S2015/HUM-344
