The decision of a committee is determined jointly by the voting process it adopts and the composition of its membership. The paper analyses the process through which committee members emerge from the eligible population and traces the consequences of this for the decisions of the committee. It is shown that the equilibrium committee will be composed of representatives from the extremes of the taste distribution. These extremes balance each other and the committee reaches a moderate decision. However, this mutual negation by the extremes is a socially wasteful use of time. Data from the UK House of Lords is used to illustrate these results. Copyright 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Article provided by Springer in its journal Public Choice.
Volume (Year): 106 (2001) Issue (Month): 1-2 (January) Pages: 1-22 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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Martin J. Osborne & Jeffrey S. Rosenthal & Matthew A. Turner, 2000.
"Meetings with Costly Participation,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 927-943, September.
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Martin Osborne & Jeffry Rosenthal & Matthew A. Turner, 1998.
"Meetings with costly participation,"
Working Papers
mturner-98-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
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