Some committees are made up of experts, persons interested in both the (subject) matter at hand and in coming across as able decision-makers. Such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. We present a theory that describes the reaction of experts to the requirement to...

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'...

Some committees are made up of experts, persons interested in both the (subject) matter at hand and in coming across as able decision-makers. Such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. We present a theory that describes the reaction of experts to the requirement to...

Democracies delegate substantial decision power to politicians. We analyse a model in which the electorate wants an office-motivated incumbent to design, examine and implement public policies. We show that voters can always encourage politicians to design projects. However, they cannot always...

We analyse the implications of endogenizing information collection and reputational concerns for the performance of a sequential decision structure. In this model, two agents decide in a sequence whether to implement a public project. The cost of gathering information is private. We derive two...

Some committees are made up of experts, persons interested in both the (subject) matter at hand and in coming across as able decision-makers. Such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. We present a theory that describes the reaction of experts to the requirement to...