Book Review: Europe: Bureaucrats as Law-makers: Committee Decision-making in the EU Council of Ministers
In: Political studies review, Band 12, Heft 2, S. 322-323
ISSN: 1478-9302
In: Political studies review, Band 12, Heft 2, S. 322-323
ISSN: 1478-9302
In: American political science review, Band 68, Heft 1
ISSN: 0003-0554
In: American political science review, Band 68, Heft 1, S. 269-271
ISSN: 1537-5943
In: The Canadian journal of economics: the journal of the Canadian Economics Association = Revue canadienne d'économique, Band 42, Heft 2, S. 359-392
ISSN: 1540-5982
Abstract This article reviews recent developments in the theory of committee decision‐making. A committee consists of self‐interested members who make a public decision by aggregating imperfect information dispersed among them according to a pre‐specified decision rule. We focus on costly information acquisition, strategic information aggregation, and rules and processes that enhance the quality of the committee decision. Seeming inefficiencies of the committee decision‐making process such as over‐cautiousness, voting, and delay emerge as partial remedies to these incentive problems.
As mentioned in the introduction, the objective of this work has been to get a more realistic understanding of economic decision making processes by adopting an interdisciplinary approach which takes into consideration at the same time economic and psychological issues. The research in particular has been focused on the psychological concept of categorization, which in the standard economic theory has received until now no attention, and on its implications for decision making. The three experimental studies conducted in this work provide empirical evidence that individuals don not behave according to the perfect rationality and maximization assumptions which underly the SEUT, but rather as bounded rational satisfiers who try to simplify the decision problems they face through the process of categorization. The results of the first experimental study, on bilateral integrative negotiation, show that most of the people categorize a continuum of outcomes in two categories (satisfying/not satisfying), and treat all the options within each category as equivalent. This process of categorization leads the negotiators to make suboptimal agreements and to what I call the ?Zone of Agreement Bias? (ZAB). The experimental study on committees? decision making with logrolling provides evidence of how the categorization of outcomes in satisfying/not satisfying can affect the process of coalition formation in multi-issue decisions. In the first experiment, involving 3-issues and 3-parties decisions under majority rule, the categorization of outcomes leads most of the individuals to form suboptimal coalitions and make Pareto-dominated agreements. The second experiment, aimed at comparing the suboptimizing effect of categorization under majority and unanimity rule, shows that the unanimity rule can lead to a much higher rate of optimal agreements than the majority rule. The third experiment, involving 4-issues and 4-parties decisions provides evidence that the results of experiments 1 and 2 hold even when the level of complexity of the decision problem increases.
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As mentioned in the introduction, the objective of this work has been to get a more realistic understanding of economic decision making processes by adopting an interdisciplinary approach which takes into consideration at the same time economic and psychological issues. The research in particular has been focused on the psychological concept of categorization, which in the standard economic theory has received until now no attention, and on its implications for decision making. The three experimental studies conducted in this work provide empirical evidence that individuals don not behave according to the perfect rationality and maximization assumptions which underly the SEUT, but rather as bounded rational satisfiers who try to simplify the decision problems they face through the process of categorization...
In: European journal of political economy, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 563-597
ISSN: 1873-5703
This is a survey on the recent game theoretic literature on committee decision making. We consider theoretical work on the role of (i) strategic voting, (ii) costly information acquisition, (iii) conflicting interests, & (iv) communication in committees. Moreover, we review recent experimental evidence on these issues. Our analysis focuses on the optimal size, composition, & decision rules of committees. We also finally discuss implications for the design of monetary policy committees. Figures, References. [Copyright 2005 Elsevier B.V.]
In: Public choice, Band 106, Heft 1-2, S. 1-22
ISSN: 0048-5829
The decision of a committee is determined jointly by the voting process it adopts & the composition of its membership. The paper analyzes the process through which committee members emerge from the eligible population, & traces the consequences of this for the decisions of the committee. It is shown that the equilibrium committee will be composed of representatives from the extremes of the taste distribution. These extremes balance each other, & the committee reaches a moderate decision. However, this mutual negation by the extremes is a socially wasteful use of time. Data from the UK House of Lords are used to illustrate these results. 2 Tables, 1 Appendix, 7 References. Adapted from the source document.
In: Economics of planning: an international journal devoted to the study of comparative economics, planning and development, Band 24, Heft 2, S. 107-120
ISSN: 1573-0808
In: Public choice, Band 106, Heft 1, S. 1-22
ISSN: 0048-5829
In: Administrative science quarterly: ASQ ; dedicated to advancing the understanding of administration through empirical investigation and theoretical analysis, Band 3, S. 73-86
ISSN: 0001-8392
In: Administrative Science Quarterly, Band 3, Heft 1, S. 73
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"Information Aggregation in Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.
In: Lecture notes in economics and mathematical systems, 635
Political and economic institutions are typically governed by committees that face the challenge to reconcile the preferences of their members. How should decision rules be designed to generate fair and sustainable agreements, for example if committee members represent groups of different sizes? This book uses game-theoretic concepts and models to address the issue of political decision-making processes. In addition to providing a survey on basic game-theoretic tools in the analysis of political decisions, the author looks at specific issues such as two-tiered voting systems or the influence of lobbyists on legislative committees, and shows how the models can be applied to real-world contexts such as the EU decision-making institutions.