Producing and Manipulating Information

To reduce the chances of policy failures, policy makers need information about the effects of policies. Sometimes, policy makers can rely on agents who already possess the information. Often, the information has yet to be produced. This raises two problems. First, for a policy maker it is hard to ascertain how much effort an expert has put in acquiring information. Second, when the expert has an interest in the policy outcome, she may manipulate information to bring the policy decision more in line with her preferences. We show that experts who are unbiased toward the policy alternatives put highest effort in collecting information. Eliminating manipulation of information, however, requires that the preferences of the policy maker and the expert are aligned. Hence, when selecting an expert, policy makers face a trade-off. We show that policy makers optimally appoint experts with policy preferences which are less extreme than their own.

Is Transparency to No Avail? Committee Decision-Making, Pre-Meetings, and Credible Deals

Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a model of committee decision-making that explains the public.s demand for transparency, and committee members. aversion to it. In line with case study evidence, we show how pressures to become transparent induce committee members to organize pre-meetings away from the public eye. Outcomes of pre-meetings, deals, are less determined, more anarchic, than those of formal meetings, but within bounds. We characterize deals that are self-enforcing in the formal meeting.Committee decision-making, reputational concerns, transparency, pre-meetings, deliberation, self-enforcing deals, coalitions

Decision Making and Learning in a Globalizing World

Decision-makers can benefit from the experience of others with solutions to common problems. If a best practice exists, the challenge is to recognize it and to ensure its diffusion. Information about different solutions is often dispersed, and decision-makers may be reluctant to switch for reputational reasons. We study how (i) the assignment of decision rights (who decides on the solutions.implementation?) and (ii) globalization (who knows what about solutions adopted in other places?) in.uence both the quality of the information on locally adopted solutions that decision-makers exchange and the quality of the solutions that are actually being used next.centralization, decentralization, learning, cheap talk, reputational concerns, globalization, health care consensus panels, EU Open Method of Coordination

Delegation or Voting

Collective decision procedures should balance the incentives they provide toacquire information and their capacity to aggregate private information. In a decisionproblem in which a project can be accepted or rejected once information about its qualityhas been acquired or not, we compare the performance of a delegation structure with that oftwo voting procedures. Delegation makes one's acceptance decision pivotal by definition.The decisiveness of one's vote in a voting procedure depends on the other agent's vote.This in turn determines the decision to acquire information. In the debate about a rationalchoice foundation of Condorcet's Jury Theorem, the distribution of information was leftexogenous. Mixed (acceptance) strategies were required to validate the Theorem.Endogenizing information acquisition as we do reveals mixed (acceptance) strategies to bedetrimental for welfare as they lead to indifference between buying and not buyinginformation

Producing and Manipulating Information

To reduce the chances of policy failures, policy makers need information about the effects of policies. Sometimes, policy makers can rely on agents who already possess the information. Often, the information has yet to be produced. This raises two problems. First, for a policy maker it is hard to ascertain how much effort an expert has put in acquiring information. Second, when the expert has an interest in the policy outcome, she may manipulate information to bring the policy decision more in line with her preferences. We show that experts who are unbiased toward the policy alternatives put highest effort in collecting information. Eliminating manipulation of information, however, requires that the preferences of the policy maker and the expert are aligned. Hence, when selecting an expert, policy makers face a trade-off. We show that policy makers optimally appoint experts with policy preferences which are less extreme than their own

The Effect of Fiscal Rules on Public Investment if Budget Deficits Are Politically Motivated

Uncertainty about the future preferences of the government may induce policy makers to run excessive budget deficits. As a solution to this problem, economists have proposed to impose a binding debt rule. In this paper we argue that a binding debt rule does not eliminate the distortions due to strategic behaviour of politicians. Rather, strategic manipulation shifts from public debt to public investment. As an alternative, we examine the effects of a capital borrowing rule which permits the government to run a budget deficit equal to the amount of public investment. We show that this rule effectively eliminates strategic behaviour.fiscal rules and budget deficits and public investment