IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuiedp/0825.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Let the Experts Decide? Asymmetric Information, Abstention, and Coordination in Standing Committees

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca Morton

    (New York University)

  • Jean-Robert Tyran

    (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

We examine abstention when voters in standing committees are asymmetrically informed and there are multiple pure strategy equilibria-swing voter's curse (SVC) equilibria where voters with low quality information abstain and equilibria when all participants vote their information. When the asymmetry in information quality is large, we find that voting groups largely coordinate on the SVC equilibrium which is also Pareto Optimal. However, we find that when the asymmetry in information quality is not large and the Pareto Optimal equilibrium is for all to participate, significant numbers of voters with low quality information abstain. Furthermore, we find that information asymmetry induces voters with low quality information to coordinate on a non-equilibrium outcome. This suggests that coordination on "letting the experts" decide is a likely voting norm that sometimes validates SVC equilibrium predictions but other times does not.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Morton & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2008. "Let the Experts Decide? Asymmetric Information, Abstention, and Coordination in Standing Committees," Discussion Papers 08-25, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0825
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2008/0825.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Battaglini & Rebecca B. Morton & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2010. "The Swing Voter's Curse in the Laboratory," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 61-89.
    2. Feddersen, Timothy J. & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1999. "Abstention in Elections with Asymmetric Information and Diverse Preferences," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(2), pages 381-398, June.
    3. S. Nageeb Ali & Jacob K. Goeree & Navin Kartik & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2008. "Information Aggregation in Standing and Ad Hoc Committees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 181-186, May.
    4. Giovanna Devetag & Andreas Ortmann, 2007. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-344, September.
    5. Clark, Kenneth & Sefton, Martin, 2001. "Repetition and signalling: experimental evidence from games with efficient equilibria," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 357-362, March.
    6. Coughlan, Peter J., 2000. "In Defense of Unanimous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 375-393, June.
    7. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    8. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Adam Meirowitz, 2002. "Informative voting and condorcet jury theorems with a continuum of types," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 19(1), pages 219-236.
    10. Van Weelden, Richard, 2008. "Deliberation Rules and Voting," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(1), pages 83-88, January.
    11. Joseph McMurray, 2008. "Information and Voting: the Wisdom of the Experts versus the Wisdom of the Masses," Wallis Working Papers WP59, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    12. Marco Battaglini & Rebecca B. Morton & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2008. "Information Aggregation and Strategic Abstention in Large Laboratory Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 194-200, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amrita Dillon & REBECCA B. MORTON & JEAN-ROBERT TYRAN, 2015. "Corruption in Committees: An Experimental Study of Information Aggregation through Voting," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(4), pages 553-579, August.
    2. Mengel, Friederike & Rivas, Javier, 2017. "Common value elections with private information and informative priors: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 190-221.
    3. Morton, Rebecca B. & Piovesan, Marco & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2019. "The dark side of the vote: Biased voters, social information, and information aggregation through majority voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 461-481.
    4. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    5. Mark T. Le Quement & Isabel Marcin, 2016. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Oct 2016.
    6. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2006. "Preference Monotonicity and Information Aggregation in Elections," Working Paper 325, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Dec 2008.
    7. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    8. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    9. Patrick Hummel, 2012. "Deliberation in large juries with diverse preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 595-608, March.
    10. Kim, Jaehoon & Fey, Mark, 2007. "The swing voter's curse with adversarial preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 236-252, July.
    11. Joseph McMurray, 2008. "Information and Voting: the Wisdom of the Experts versus the Wisdom of the Masses," Wallis Working Papers WP59, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    12. Kohei Kawamura & Vasileios Vlaseros, 2015. "Expert Information and Majority Decisions," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 261, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    13. Kawamura, Kohei & Vlaseros, Vasileios, 2017. "Expert information and majority decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 77-88.
    14. Darius Schlangenotto & Wendelin Schnedler & Radovan Vadovič, 2020. "Against All Odds: Tentative Steps toward Efficient Information Sharing in Groups," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-24, August.
    15. Nektarios Oraiopoulos & Stylianos Kavadias, 2020. "Is Diversity (Un-)Biased? Project Selection Decisions in Executive Committees," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 906-924, September.
    16. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2013. "Condorcet Jury Theorem in a Spatial Model of Elections," Working Paper 517, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Nov 2013.
    17. Marcello Puca & Krista Jabs Saral & Simone M. Sepe, 2023. "The Value of Consensus. An Experimental Analysis of Costly Deliberation," CSEF Working Papers 680, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    18. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.
    19. Meirowitz, Adam, 2005. "Deliberative Democracy or Market Democracy: Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Papers 03-28-2005, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    20. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2017. "Multicandidate elections: Aggregate uncertainty in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 132-150.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0825. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Hoffmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/okokudk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.