Can Words Get in the Way? The Effect of Deliberation in Collective Decision Making

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Iaryczower, Matias; Shi, Xiaoxia; Shum, Matthew
• 署名单位: Princeton University; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; California Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/696228
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 688-734
• 关键词: unanimous jury verdicts; discrete games; INFORMATION; preferences; identification; COMMUNICATION; aggregation; inference; models

摘要

We quantify the effect of deliberation on the decisions of US appellate courts. We estimate a model in which strategic judges communicate before casting their votes and then compare the probability of mistakes in the court with deliberation with a counterfactual of no communication. The model has multiple equilibria, and preferences and information parameters are only partially identified. We find that there is a range of parameters in the identified setwhen judges tend to disagree ex ante or their private information is imprecisein which deliberation can be beneficial; otherwise, deliberation reduces the effectiveness of the court.