Committees improve decisions by pooling independent information of members, but promote manipulation, obfuscation, and exaggeration of private evidence when members have conflicting preferences. We study how self-interest mediates these conflicting forces. When members' preferences differ, no...

Committees improve decisions by pooling independent information of members, but promote manipulation, obfuscation, and exaggeration of private information when members have conflicting preferences. When members' preferences differ, the report submitted by any individual can not allow perfect...

We study experimentally the effectiveness of communication in common value committees exhibiting publicly known heterogeneous biases. We test models assuming respectively self-interested and strategic-, joint payoff-maximizing- and cognitively heterogeneous agents. These predict varying degrees...