We examine the consequences of vote transparency in committees whose members fear being blamed by partisan observers for casting an unfavorable vote. We show that such social pressure, like optimal taxation, can improve the collective decision by mitigating a voting externality. Hence,...

Despite the wide variety of agendas used in legislative settings, the literature on sophisticated voting has focused on two formats, the so-called Euro-Latin and Anglo-American agendas. In the current paper, I introduce a broad class of agendas whose defining structural features,...

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...

We study the effect of public information on collective decision-making in a committee with members of both common and conflicting interests. We show that the set of preferences that allow for the existence of an informative voting equilibrium can be heavily restricted by the presence of a...

We study the effect of public information on collective decision-making in committees, where members can have both common and conflicting interests. In the presence of public information, the simple and efficient vote-your-signal strategy profile no longer constitutes an equilibrium under the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Existing theoretical and experimental studies have established that unanimity is a poor decision rule for promoting information aggregation. Despite this, unanimity is frequently used in committees making decisions on behalf of society. This paper shows that when committee members are exposed to...