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Voting in large committees with disesteem payoffs: A ‘state of the art’ model

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  • Midjord, Rune
  • Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás
  • Valasek, Justin

Abstract

We consider a committee of experts that decides to approve or reject an innovation on behalf of society. In addition to a payoff linked to the correctness of the committee's decision, each expert receives disesteem payoffs if he/she votes in favor of an ill-fated innovation or votes against an innovation that proves to be beneficial. We find that the predictions of the model are sensitive to the signal technology. In the standard Condorcet framework experts' signals are i.i.d. conditional on the state of the world, implying that the state of the world is approximated with arbitrary precision by a sufficiently large number of signals. Under this assumption, any combination of disesteem payoffs leads to acceptance with too high a probability. However, if this assumption is relaxed, depending on the relative size of the disesteem payoffs the committee may accept or reject the innovation with too high a probability.

Suggested Citation

  • Midjord, Rune & Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "Voting in large committees with disesteem payoffs: A ‘state of the art’ model," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 430-443.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:104:y:2017:i:c:p:430-443
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.03.003
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    11. Rune Midjord & Tomas Rodriguez Barraquer & Justin Valasek, 2013. "Over-Caution of Large Committees of Experts," Discussion Paper Series dp654, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
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    2. Ginzburg, Boris & Guerra, José-Alberto & Lekfuangfu, Warn N., 2022. "Counting on my vote not counting: Expressive voting in committees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    3. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Miriam Krausz & Shmuel Nitzan, 2018. "The effect of democratic decision-making on investment in reputation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 155-164, October.
    4. Tajika, Tomoya, 2022. "Voting on tricky questions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 380-389.
    5. Emeric Henry & Charles Louis-Sidois, 2020. "Voting and Contributing When the Group Is Watching," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 246-276, August.
    6. Midjord, Rune & Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás & Valasek, Justin, 2021. "When voters like to be right: An analysis of the Condorcet Jury Theorem with mixed motives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    7. Alvaro J. Name-Correa & Huseyin Yildirim, 2018. "A capture theory of committees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 135-154, October.
    8. Rune Midjord & Tomás Rodríguez Barraquer & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2019. "Robust Information Aggregation Through Voting," CESifo Working Paper Series 7713, CESifo.
    9. Name-Correa, Alvaro J. & Yildirim, Huseyin, 2019. "Social pressure, transparency, and voting in committees," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    10. Yves Breitmoser & Justin Valasek & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2023. "Why Do Committees Work?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10800, CESifo.
    11. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2023. "Why do committees work?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 18/2023, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Committees; Information aggregation; Disesteem payoffs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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