Committees as Active Audiences : Reputation Concerns and Information Acquisition

We study committees that acquire information, deliberate, and vote. A member cares about state-dependent decision payoffs and his reputation for expertise. The state remains unobserved. In such environments, members' internal reputations are based on deliberation patterns, while members' external reputations are based on the observed group decision. We find that either form of reputation concerns creates strategic complementarity among members' effort levels. Internal reputations create stronger incentives to become informed than external reputations. Their strength grows in committee size; external reputations create no incentives in large committees. Finally, reputation concerns may relax participation constraints