In light of recent evidence, we develop a theory of charitable giving in which donors feel social pressure from a direct solicitation. We show that equilibrium donations are concentrated around a social norm: donors below the norm increase giving while those above the norm reduce it. Despite a...

A committee of experts votes between a multi-attribute alternative and status quo. Each expert is a biased specialist who can privately evaluate only one attribute and puts more weight on it. We study whether a social-minded principal would compose the committee of more or less biased experts....

Why do committees exist? The extant literature emphasizes that they pool dispersed information across members. In this paper, we argue that they may also serve to discourage outside influence or capture by raising its cost. As such, committees may contain members who add no new information to...