We study experimentally the effectiveness of communication in common value committees exhibiting publicly known …

Theory predicts that committees of experts may take decisions that look good but are bad and that they show a united … front to impress evaluators. Although evaluators see through this behavior, committees persist in it only to avoid worse … of committees, words speak louder than costly decisions. Evaluators pick this up. Orthogonality tests show that …

. Counterfactual analysis shows that committees add value through aggregating private assessments, but that gains to larger committees … their assessments also have lower precision, mixed committees may not be optimal. …

Most monetary policy committees decide on interest rates using a simple majority voting rule. Given the inherent …

. Counterfactual analysis shows that committees add value through aggregating private assessments, but that gains to larger committees … their assessments also have lower precision, mixed committees may not be optimal. …

important features of committees: the effect of their size on performance and whether or not they are more moderate than the … a decision. A result of the famous Condorcet Jury Theorem is that larger committees have more resources, in the form of … the latter not to be true. As a result of shirking and coordination problems, smaller committees may be better than larger …