Suchergebnisse

Abstract
A group of privately informed individuals with common interests chooses a binary option. Each individual chooses whether to reveal her signal, at a cost. If the group is large and cannot commit to a decision rule then it takes the correct decision with high probability in one state but with probability bounded away from one in the other. It cannot do better by committing to an anonymous decision rule without transfers, but can achieve the first best if transfers between individuals are possible, and can approximately achieve the first best with a non-anonymous decision rule.

We study a collective decision-making process in which people interested in an issue may participate, at a cost, in a meeting, and the resulting decision is a compromise among the participants' preferences. We show that the equilibrium number of participants is small and their positions are extreme, and when the compromise is the median, the outcome is likely to be random. The model and its equilibria are consistent with evidence on the procedures and outcomes of U.S. regulatory hearings. (JEL D7, H0, L5)