This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in...

A small committee has to approve/reject a project with uncertain return. Members have different preferences: some are value-maximizers, others are biased towards approval. We focus on the efficient use of scarce information when communication is not guaranteed, and we provide insights on the...

The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...

We consider a framework where the optimal decision rule determining the collective choice depends in a simple way on the decision makers' posterior probabilities of a particular state of nature. Nevertheless, voting is generally an inefficient way to make collective choices and this paper sheds...

Altruistic parents, who differ in income, make financial transfers to their children, who differ in ability. The children invest in post-compulsory education, subject to an endogenous credit constraint, and taking policy as given. There are two policy tools: a subsidy to those who participate in...

In an overlapping generations model with two social classes, rich and poor, parents of the different social classes vote on two issues: redistributive policies for them and education investment for their children. Public education is the engine for growth through its effect on human capital; but...

We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students on deep-discount flat rate tickets for public transportation and culture. Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated...

The difficulty of optimal decision making in uncertain dichotomous choice settings is that it requires information on the expertise of the decision makers (voters). This paper presents a method of optimally weighting voters even without testing them against questions with known right answers....

In some important multi-player situations, such as efforts to supply a global public good, players can choose the game they want to play. In this paper we conduct an experimental test of the decision to choose between a “tipping” game, in which every player wants to contribute to the public...