Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study

Mark T. Le Quement () and Isabel Marcin ()
Additional contact information
Mark T. Le Quement: University of Bonn
Isabel Marcin: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

No 2016_05, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: We study experimentally the effectiveness of communication in common value committees exhibiting publicly known heterogeneous biases. We test models assuming respectively self-interested and strategic-, joint payoff-maximizing- and cognitively heterogeneous agents. These predict varying degrees of strategic communication. We use a 2 x 2 design varying the information protocol (communication vs exogenous public signals) and the group composition (heterogeneous vs homogeneous). Results are only consistent with the third model. Roughly 80% of (heuristic) subjects truth-tell and vote with the majority of announced signals. Remaining (sophisticated) agents lie strategically and approximately apply their optimal decision rule.

Keywords: Committees; Voting; Information Aggregation; Cheap Talk; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-03, Revised 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-pr~, nep-net and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2016_05online.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2016_05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marc Martin ().