IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Two Heads Better Than One?: An Experimental Analysis of Group vs. Individual Decisionmaking

Author

Listed:
  • Alan S. Blinder
  • John Morgan

Abstract

Two laboratory experiments - one a statistical urn problem, the other a monetary policy experiment - were run to test the commonly-believed hypothesis that groups make decisions more slowly than individuals do. Surprisingly, this turns out not to be true there is no significant difference in average decision lags. Furthermore, and also surprisingly, there is no significant difference in the decision lag when groups decisions are made by majority rule versus when they are made under a unanimity requirement. In addition, group decisions are on average superior to individual decisions. The results are strikingly similar across the two experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan S. Blinder & John Morgan, 2000. "Are Two Heads Better Than One?: An Experimental Analysis of Group vs. Individual Decisionmaking," NBER Working Papers 7909, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7909
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7909.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Laurence Ball, 1999. "Efficient Rules for Monetary Policy," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 63-83, April.
    3. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, January.
    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. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2002. "Assessing Nominal Income Rules for Monetary Policy with Model and Data Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 402-432, April.
    2. Alexandre, Fernando & Driffill, John & Spagnolo, Fabio, 2002. "Inflation Targeting, Exchange Rate Volatility and International Policy Coordination," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 70(4), pages 546-569, Special I.
    3. Smets, Frank, 2003. "Maintaining price stability: how long is the medium term?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1293-1309, September.
    4. Teruyoshi Kobayashi, 2004. "On the Relationship Between Short‐ and Long‐term Interest Rates," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 261-286, July.
    5. Caglayan, Mustafa & Jehan, Zainab & Mouratidis, Kostas, 2012. "Asymmetric monetary policy rules for open economies: Evidence from four countries," MPRA Paper 37401, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Wasim Shahid Malik & Ather Maqsood Ahmed, 2010. "Taylor Rule and the Macroeconomic Performance in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 49(1), pages 37-56.
    7. Lars E. O. Svensson, 1999. "Monetary policy issues for the Eurosystem," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    8. repec:pri:cepsud:70blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Lansing, Kevin J. & Trehan, Bharat, 2003. "Forward-looking behavior and optimal discretionary monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 249-256, November.
    10. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "The quest for prosperity without inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 633-663, April.
    11. Castelnuovo, Efrem, 2008. "Regime shifts and the stability of backward-looking Phillips curves in open economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 40-53, February.
    12. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Monetary policy evaluation with noisy information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 605-631, April.
    13. Luís, Pacheco, 2004. "Asset Prices and Monetary Policy in the Euro Area: a tentative model," MPRA Paper 6579, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Robert Tchaidze & Alina Carare, 2004. "The Use and Abuse of Taylor Rules: How precisely can we estimate them?," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 132, Econometric Society.
    15. Tore Ellingsen & Ulf Soderstrom, 2001. "Monetary Policy and Market Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1594-1607, December.
    16. Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Svensson, Lars E. O., 2002. "Eurosystem monetary targeting: Lessons from U.S. data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 417-442, March.
    17. Hartmann, Daniel, 2001. "Taylor-Regel und amerikanische Geldpolitik," Violette Reihe: Schriftenreihe des Promotionsschwerpunkts "Globalisierung und Beschäftigung" 17/2001, University of Hohenheim, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Evangelisches Studienwerk.
    18. Alvarez-Ramirez, Jose & Ibarra-Valdez, Carlos & Fernandez-Anaya, Guillermo & Villarreal, Francisco, 2008. "A modified Taylor rule for dealing with demand shocks and uncertain potential macroeconomic output," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(5), pages 1283-1300.
    19. Castelnuovo Efrem, 2006. "The Fed's Preference for Policy Rate Smoothing: Overestimation Due to Misspecification?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-22, August.
    20. Robert Tchaidze, 2002. "Greenspan and the Greenbook," Economics Working Paper Archive 472, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    21. repec:kap:iaecre:v:14:y:2008:i:2:p:156-166 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Ajax R. B. Moreira & Marco A. F. H. Cavalcanti, 2015. "Robustness and Stabilization Properties of Monetary Policy Rules in Brazil," Discussion Papers 0100, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    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:nbr:nberwo:7909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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: (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.