Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/180613 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 11595
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We study communication in committees selecting one of two alternatives when consensus is required and agents have private information about their preferences. Delaying the decision is costly, so a form of multiplayer war of attrition emerges. Waiting allows voters to express the intensity of their preferences and may help to select the alternative correctly more often than simple majority. In a series of laboratory experiments, we investigate how various rules affect the outcome reached. We vary the amount of feedback and the communication protocol available to voters: complete secrecy about the pattern of support; feedback about this support; public communication; and within-group communication. The feedback no-communication mechanism is worse than no feedback benchmark in all measures of welfare - the efficient alternative is chosen less often, waiting cost is higher, and thus net welfare is lower. Our headline result is that adding communication restores net efficiency, but in different ways. Public communication does poorly in terms of selecting the correct alternative, but limits the cost of delay, while group communication improves allocative efficiency, but has at best a moderate effect on delay.
Subjects: 
voting
intensity of preferences
supermajority
conclave
war of attrition
communication
JEL: 
C78
C92
D72
D74
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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