Information aggregation in debate: who should speak first?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ottaviani, M; Sorensen, P
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; University of London; University College London; University of Copenhagen
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(00)00119-5
• 发表日期: 2001
• 页码: 393-421
• 关键词: committee; reputation; expertise; cheap talk; ORDER

摘要

Privately informed individuals speak openly in front of other members of a committee about the desirability of a public decision. Each individual wishes to appear well informed. For any given order of speech, committee members may herd by suppressing their true information. With individuals of heterogeneous expertise, optimizing over the order of speech can improve the extraction of information, but not perfectly so. It is not always optimal to use the common anti-seniority rule whereby experts speak in order of increasing expertise. A committee with more able experts may be afflicted by greater herding problems, yielding a worse outcome. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.