IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc17/168187.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tie-Breaking Power in Committees

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Alexander K.
  • Granic, Dura-Georg

Abstract

We investigate the effects of voting power in a committee in which one member (the chairman) holds, on top of a regular vote, also the power to break ties. The chairman is able to induce her preferred outcome much more often than predicted by theory, but only partially because of exercising tie-breaking power directly. The advantage of the chairman is largely determined by the limited strategic sophistication of committee members.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Alexander K. & Granic, Dura-Georg, 2017. "Tie-Breaking Power in Committees," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168187, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/168187/1/VfS-2017-pid-3038.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Larbi Alaoui & Antonio Penta, 2016. "Endogenous Depth of Reasoning," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(4), pages 1297-1333.
    2. Laruelle,Annick & Valenciano,Federico, 2011. "Voting and Collective Decision-Making," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521182638, January.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    4. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    5. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    6. Casella, Alessandra & Turban, Sébastien, 2014. "Democracy undone. Systematic minority advantage in competitive vote markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 47-70.
    7. Stephen Ansolabehere & James M. Snyder & Aaron B. Strauss & Michael M. Ting, 2005. "Voting Weights and Formateur Advantages in the Formation of Coalition Governments," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 550-563, July.
    8. John Kagel & Hankyoung Sung & Eyal Winter, 2010. "Veto power in committees: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(2), pages 167-188, June.
    9. Baron, David P. & Ferejohn, John A., 1989. "Bargaining in Legislatures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1181-1206, December.
    10. Stefan T. Trautmann & Gijs Kuilen, 2015. "Belief Elicitation: A Horse Race among Truth Serums," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(589), pages 2116-2135, December.
    11. Guillaume Fréchette & John H. Kagel & Massimo Morelli, 2005. "Behavioral Identification in Coalitional Bargaining: An Experimental Analysis of Demand Bargaining and Alternating Offers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1893-1937, November.
    12. Maria Montero & Martin Sefton & Ping Zhang, 2008. "Enlargement and the balance of power: an experimental study," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 69-87, January.
    13. Bacharach, Michael & Bernasconi, Michele, 1997. "The Variable Frame Theory of Focal Points: An Experimental Study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 1-45, April.
    14. Tremewan, James & Vanberg, Christoph, 2016. "The dynamics of coalition formation – A multilateral bargaining experiment with free timing of moves," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 33-46.
    15. Vespa, Emanuel I., 2016. "Malapportionment and multilateral bargaining: An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 64-74.
    16. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    17. James M. Snyder Jr. & Michael M. Ting & Stephen Ansolabehere, 2005. "Legislative Bargaining under Weighted Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 981-1004, September.
    18. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Graham, Michael & Wolf, Jesse, 2013. "Cognitive ability and strategic sophistication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 115-130.
    19. Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz & Tom Wilkening, 2013. "The Lure of Authority: Motivation and Incentive Effects of Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1325-1359, June.
    20. Björn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz, 2014. "The Intrinsic Value of Decision Rights," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2005-2039, November.
    21. Nicholas Bardsley & Judith Mehta & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 2010. "Explaining Focal Points: Cognitive Hierarchy Theory "versus" Team Reasoning," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(543), pages 40-79, March.
    22. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    23. Alessandra Casella & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2012. "Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(4), pages 593-658.
    24. Winter, Eyal, 1996. "Voting and Vetoing," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(4), pages 813-823, December.
    25. Dhillon, Amrita & Lockwood, Ben, 2004. "When are plurality rule voting games dominance-solvable?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 55-75, January.
    26. Bartlett,Randall, 1989. "Economics and Power," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521355629, January.
    27. Marcelo Tyszler & Arthur Schram, 2016. "Information and strategic voting," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 360-381, June.
    28. David Gill & Victoria Prowse, 2016. "Cognitive Ability, Character Skills, and Learning to Play Equilibrium: A Level-k Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(6), pages 1619-1676.
    29. Fréchette, Guillaume R. & Kagel, John H. & Lehrer, Steven F., 2003. "Bargaining in Legislatures: An Experimental Investigation of Open versus Closed Amendment Rules," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 221-232, May.
    30. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Ho, Teck-Hua & Camerer, Colin & Weigelt, Keith, 1998. "Iterated Dominance and Iterated Best Response in Experimental "p-Beauty Contests."," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 947-969, September.
    32. S Nageeb Ali & B Douglas Bernheim & Xiaochen Fan, 2019. "Predictability and Power in Legislative Bargaining," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(2), pages 500-525.
    33. Pedro Dal Bo & Andrew Foster & Louis Putterman, 2010. "Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2205-2229, December.
    34. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2016. "Quantal Response Equilibrium:A Stochastic Theory of Games," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10743.
    35. Drouvelis, Michalis & Montero, Maria & Sefton, Martin, 2010. "Gaining power through enlargement: Strategic foundations and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 274-292, July.
    36. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7683 is not listed on IDEAS
    37. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2013. "Hidden symmetries and focal points," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 226-258.
    38. Shapley, L. S. & Shubik, Martin, 1954. "A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 787-792, September.
    39. Kohlberg, Elon & Mertens, Jean-Francois, 1986. "On the Strategic Stability of Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1003-1037, September.
    40. Apesteguia, Jose & Ballester, Miguel A. & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, 2014. "A foundation for strategic agenda voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 91-99.
    41. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael & Velasco Rivera, Carlos, 2014. "Preferences or private assessments on a monetary policy committee?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 16-32.
    42. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    43. Moulin, Herve, 1979. "Dominance Solvable Voting Schemes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(6), pages 1137-1151, November.
    44. David Owens Jr. & Zachary Grossman Jr. & Ryan Fackler Jr., 2014. "The Control Premium: A Preference for Payoff Autonomy," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 138-161, November.
    45. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    46. Alessandro Riboni & Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia, 2010. "Monetary Policy by Committee: Consensus, Chairman Dominance, or Simple Majority?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 363-416.
    47. de Groot Ruiz, Adrian & Ramer, Roald & Schram, Arthur, 2016. "Formal versus informal legislative bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 1-17.
    48. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    49. Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan & Nikos Nikiforakis, 2011. "Relative Earnings and Giving in a Real-Effort Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3330-3348, December.
    50. Eckel, Catherine & Holt, Charles A, 1989. "Strategic Voting in Agenda-Controlled Committee Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 763-773, September.
    51. Laurent Bouto & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Fédéric Malherbe, 2014. "Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power," Working Papers 722, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    52. Henry W. Chappell, Jr. & Rob Roy McGregor & Todd A. Vermilyea, 2005. "Committee Decisions on Monetary Policy: Evidence from Historical Records of the Federal Open Market Committee," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262033305, April.
    53. Silverman, Dan & Slemrod, Joel & Uler, Neslihan, 2014. "Distinguishing the role of authority “in” and authority “to”," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 32-42.
    54. B. Douglas Bernheim & Antonio Rangel & Luis Rayo, 2006. "The Power of the Last Word in Legislative Policy Making," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1161-1190, September.
    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. Maaser, Nicola & Stratmann, Thomas, 2024. "Costly voting in weighted committees: The case of moral costs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    2. Montag, Josef & Tremewan, James, 2020. "Let the punishment fit the criminal: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 423-438.

    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. Breitmoser, Yves & Tan, Jonathan H.W., 2020. "Why should majority voting be unfair?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 281-295.
    2. Breitmoser, Yves & Tan, Jonathan H.W., 2014. "Reference Dependent Altruism," MPRA Paper 52774, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Aaron Kamm & Simon Siegenthaler, 2024. "Commitment timing in coalitional bargaining," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(1), pages 130-154, March.
    4. Drouvelis, Michalis & Montero, Maria & Sefton, Martin, 2010. "Gaining power through enlargement: Strategic foundations and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 274-292, July.
    5. Kim, Chulyoung & Kim, Sang-Hyun & Lee, Jinhyuk & Lee, Joosung, 2022. "Strategic alliances in a veto game: An experimental study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    6. Maaser, Nicola & Paetzel, Fabian & Traub, Stefan, 2019. "Power illusion in coalitional bargaining: An experimental analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 433-450.
    7. Ferreira, João V. & Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Tarroux, Benoît, 2020. "On the roots of the intrinsic value of decision rights: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 110-122.
    8. Kim, Duk Gyoo & Lim, Wooyoung, 2024. "Multilateral bargaining over the division of losses," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 59-76.
    9. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    10. João V. Ferreira & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Benoît Tarroux, 2017. "On the Roots of the Intrinsic Value of Decision Rights: Evidence from France and Japan," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 2017-11, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    11. Vespa, Emanuel I., 2016. "Malapportionment and multilateral bargaining: An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 64-74.
    12. Greiner, Ben, 2023. "Strategic uncertainty aversion in bargaining — Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    13. Kim, Duk Gyoo, 2023. "“One Bite at the apple”: Legislative bargaining without replacement," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    14. Andrzej Baranski & Rebecca Morton, 2022. "The determinants of multilateral bargaining: a comprehensive analysis of Baron and Ferejohn majoritarian bargaining experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(4), pages 1079-1108, September.
    15. Li, Shuwen & Houser, Daniel, 2022. "Stochastic bargaining in the lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 687-715.
    16. Bosch-Domènech, Antoni & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2013. "On the role of non-equilibrium focal points as coordination devices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 52-67.
    17. Nunnari, Salvatore, 2021. "Dynamic legislative bargaining with veto power: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 186-230.
    18. Bayer, Ralph C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical omniscience at the laboratory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-49.
    19. Chessa, Michela & Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Lardon, Aymeric & Yamada, Takashi, 2023. "An experiment on the Nash program: A comparison of two strategic mechanisms implementing the Shapley value," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 88-104.
    20. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • 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

    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:zbw:vfsc17:168187. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.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.