Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/141634 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9875
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes how to allocate experts into committees that use the unanimity rule to make decisions. We show that an optimal allocation of experts is extremely asymmetric. To reach the optimal allocation, therefore, one needs only to rank the experts in terms of their abilities and then allocate adjacent experts such that an expert's ability tends to vary inversely with the size of his committee. In the special case of three-member committees, we show that the optimal allocation maximizes the sum of the products of the experts' skills in each committee.
Subjects: 
unanimity rule
extremely asymmetric committees
optimal composition of committees
JEL: 
D71
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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