IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eui/euiwps/eco2008-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Transparency to No Avail? Committee Decision-Making, Pre-Meetings, and Credible Deals

Author

Listed:
  • Otto H. Swank
  • Bauke Visser

Abstract

Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a model of committee decision-making that explains the public.s demand for transparency, and committee members. aversion to it. In line with case study evidence, we show how pressures to become transparent induce committee members to organize pre-meetings away from the public eye. Outcomes of pre-meetings, deals, are less determined, more anarchic, than those of formal meetings, but within bounds. We characterize deals that are self-enforcing in the formal meeting.

Suggested Citation

  • Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2008. "Is Transparency to No Avail? Committee Decision-Making, Pre-Meetings, and Credible Deals," Economics Working Papers ECO2008/18, European University Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2008/18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/8488/1/ECO_2008_18.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    2. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 150-168, March.
    3. Bernard Caillaud & Jean Tirole, 2007. "Consensus Building: How to Persuade a Group," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1877-1900, December.
    4. repec:bla:ecopol:v:16:y:2004:i::p:321-345 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Bauke Visser & Otto H. Swank, 2007. "On Committees of Experts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 337-372.
    6. Dessein, Wouter, 2007. "Why a Group Needs a Leader: Decision-making and Debate in Committees," CEPR Discussion Papers 6168, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Motty Perry & Larry Samuelson, 1994. "Open- versus Closed-Door Negotiations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 348-359, Summer.
    8. Stephen Morris, 2001. "Political Correctness," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 231-265, April.
    9. Andrea Mattozzi & Antonio Merlo, 2007. "The Transparency of Politics and the Quality of Politicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 311-315, May.
    10. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    11. Ray, Debraj & Razin, Ronny & Eliaz, Kfir, 2004. "A Decision-Theoretic Basis for Choice Shifts in Groups," CEPR Discussion Papers 4423, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Hans Gersbach & Volker Hahn, 2012. "Information acquisition and transparency in committees," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 41(2), pages 427-453, May.
    13. 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.
    14. Nicola Persico, 2004. "Committee Design with Endogenous Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 165-191.
    15. Nitzan, Shmuel & Paroush, Jacob, 1982. "Optimal Decision Rules in Uncertain Dichotomous Choice Situations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 23(2), pages 289-297, June.
    16. EllenE. Meade & David Stasavage, 2008. "Publicity of Debate and the Incentive to Dissent: Evidence from the US Federal Reserve," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 695-717, April.
    17. Birger Wernerfelt, 2007. "Delegation, Committees, and Managers," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 35-51, March.
    18. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter, 2001. "Information aggregation in debate: who should speak first?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 393-421, September.
    19. Joseph Stiglitz, 1998. "Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: The Private Uses of Public Interests: Incentives and Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 3-22, Spring.
    20. Kramer, Roderick M., 1998. "Revisiting the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam Decisions 25 Years Later: How Well Has the Groupthink Hypothesis Stood the Test of Time?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 73(2-3), pages 236-271, February.
    21. John Fingleton, 2005. "Career Concerns of Bargainers," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 179-204, April.
    22. Hans Gersbach & Volker Hahn, 2004. "Voting Transparency, Conflicting Interests, And The Appointment Of Central Bankers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 321-345, November.
    23. Kfir Eliaz & Debraj Ray & Ronny Razin, 2006. "Choice Shifts in Groups: A Decision-Theoretic Basis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1321-1332, September.
    24. Job Swank & Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2008. "How Committees of Experts Interact with the Outside World: Some Theory, and Evidence from the FOMC," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 478-486, 04-05.
    25. Gerardi, Dino & Yariv, Leeat, 2007. "Deliberative voting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 317-338, May.
    26. Ellen E. Meade, 2005. "The FOMC: preferences, voting, and consensus," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 93-101.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2009. "Decision Making and Learning in a Globalizing World," Economics Working Papers ECO2009/20, European University Institute.
    2. Mikael Apel & Carl Andreas Claussen & Petra Gerlach-Kristen & Petra Lennartsdotter & Øistein Røisland, 2013. "Monetary policy decisions – comparing theory and “inside” information from MPC members," Working Paper 2013/03, Norges Bank.
    3. Mikael Apel & Carl Andreas Claussen & Petra Lennartsdotter & Øistein Røisland, 2015. "Monetary Policy Committees: Comparing Theory and "Inside" Information from MPC Members," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 11(4), pages 47-89, December.

    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. Sebastian Fehrler & Moritz Janas, 2021. "Delegation to a Group," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3714-3743, June.
    2. Hans Gersbach & Volker Hahn, 2012. "Information acquisition and transparency in committees," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 41(2), pages 427-453, May.
    3. Fehrler, Sebastian & Hughes, Niall, 2014. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation (And Why That May Be A Good Thing)," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100440, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Spinnewijn, Johannes & Campbell, Arthur & Ederer, Florian, 2011. "Time to Decide: Information Search and Revelation in Groups," CEPR Discussion Papers 8531, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Balmaceda, Felipe, 2021. "Private vs. public communication: Difference of opinion and reputational concerns," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    6. Daniel Gibbs, 2023. "Individual accountability, collective decision-making," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 524-552, December.
    7. Sebastian Fehrler & Niall Hughes, 2018. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 181-209, February.
    8. Swank, Otto H. & Visser, Bauke, 2023. "Committees as active audiences: Reputation concerns and information acquisition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    9. Andrea Mattozzi & Marcos Y. Nakaguma, 2016. "Public versus Secret Voting in Committees," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_29, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    10. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "A rationale for unanimity in committees," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2017-308, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Hahn, Volker, 2017. "Committee design with endogenous participation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 388-408.
    12. Gershoni, Naomi, 2021. "Individual vs. group decision-making: Evidence from a natural experiment in arbitration proceedings," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    13. Job Swank & Otto Swank & Bauke Visser, 2006. "Transparency and Pre-meetings," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 06-051/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Volker Hahn, 2017. "On the drawbacks of large committees," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(2), pages 563-582, May.
    15. Rieder, Kilian, 2022. "Monetary policy decision-making by committee: Why, when and how it can work," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    16. Ronen Gradwohl, 2018. "Voting in the limelight," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(1), pages 65-103, July.
    17. Keiichi Morimoto, 2021. "Information Use and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-22, May.
    18. 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.
    19. Liu, Yaozhou Franklin & Sanyal, Amal, 2012. "When second opinions hurt: A model of expert advice under career concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16.
    20. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Committee decision-making; reputational concerns; transparency; pre-meetings; deliberation; self-enforcing deals; coalitions;
    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
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:eui:euiwps:eco2008/18. 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: Cécile Brière (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiueit.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.