Many important decisions within public and private organizations are based on recommendations from expert committees and advisory boards. A notable example is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's advisory committees, which make recommendations on new drug applications. Previously the voting...

We develop a structural model to address the question whether, and to what extent, expert panelists engage in herd behavior when voting on important policy questions. Our data comes from FDA advisory committees voting on questions concerning the approval of new drug applications. We utilize a...

We develop a structural model to address the question whether, and to what extent, expert panelists engage in herd behavior when voting on important policy questions. Our data comes from FDA advisory committees voting on questions concerning the approval of new drug applications. We utilize a...

We develop a structural model to address the question whether, and to what extent, expert panelists engage in herd behavior when voting on important policy questions. Our data comes from FDA advisory committees voting on questions concerning the approval of new drug applications. We utilize a...

Many important decisions within public and private organizations are based on recommendations from expert committees and advisory boards. A notable example is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's advisory committees, which make recommendations on new drug applications. Previously the voting...

Many important decisions within public and private organizations are based on recommendations from expert committees and advisory boards. A notable example is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's advisory committees, which make recommendations on new drug applications. Previously the voting...

We develop a structural model to address the question whether, and to what extent, expert panelists engage in herd behavior when voting on important policy questions. Our data comes from FDA advisory committees voting on questions concerning the approval of new drug applications. We utilize a...

When can a prosecutor persuade a loss-averse judge to increase her rate of conviction? Motivated by empirical evidence, I study a model of persuasion in which the loss a judge incurs from wrongful conviction looms larger than the gain from a just verdict. I show that, surprisingly, the...

Why do groups of even well-educated individuals sometimes persistently believe in political myths and ideologies? We follow cognition psychology in its finding that individuals sometimes stick with intuitive but false propositions. We also follow Kahneman, however, in maintaining that they...

Direct experience of a peer’s punishment might make non-punished peers reassess the probability and consequences of facing punishment and hence induce a change in their behavior. We test this mechanism in a setting, China, in which we observe the reactions to the same peer’s punishment by...