Public Versus Secret Voting in Committees

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mattozzi, Andrea; Nakaguma, Marcos Y.
• 署名单位: University of Bologna; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Getulio Vargas Foundation
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvac061
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 907-940
• 关键词: information aggregation-theory; unanimous jury verdicts; decision-making; TRANSPARENCY; curse

摘要

We study the effect of transparency of individual votes in committees where members are heterogeneous in competence and bias, they are career-concerned, and they can abstain. We show that public voting attenuates the biases of competent members and secret voting attenuates the biases of incompetent members. Public voting leads to better decisions when the magnitude of the bias is large, while secret voting performs better otherwise. We present novel experimental evidence consistent with our theory.