This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment studying the role of asymmetries, both in payoffs and recognition probabilities, in a model of strategic bargaining with Condorcet cycles. Overall, we find only limited support for the equilibrium predictions. The main deviations from...

Collective decision procedures should balance the incentives they provide toacquire information and their capacity to aggregate private information. In a decisionproblem in which a project can be accepted or rejected once information about its qualityhas been acquired or not, we compare the...

There are many situations in which different groups make collective decisions by committee voting, where each group is represented by a single person. Theoretical concepts suggest how the voting systems in such committees should be designed, but these abstract rules can usually not be...

There are many situations in which different groups make collective decisions by committee voting, with each group represented by a single person. A natural question is what voting system such a committee should use. Concepts based on voting power provide guidelines for this choice. The two most...

After decades of government growth, Western countries have witnessed major policy reversals. Prominent examples include the far-reaching policy reversals implemented by Thatcher, Reagan, and Douglas. This paper offers an explanation for these policy reversals. Our key argument rests on the...