Corruption in committees: An experimental study of information aggregation through voting

Author(s)
Rebecca Morton, Jean-Robert Tyran
Abstract

We investigate experimentally the effects of corrupt experts on information aggregation in committees. We find that nonexperts are significantly less likely to delegate through abstention when there is a probability that experts are corrupt. Such decreased abstention, when the probability of corrupt experts is low, actually increases information efficiency in committee decision-making. However, if the probability of corrupt experts is large, the effect is not sufficient to offset the mechanical effect of decreased information efficiency due to corrupt experts. Our results demonstrate that the norm of "letting the expert decide" in committee voting is influenced by the probability of corrupt experts, and that influence can have, to a limited extent, a positive effect on information efficiency.

Organisation(s)
Department of Economics, Vienna Center for Experimental Economics
External organisation(s)
New York University
Journal
Journal of Public Economic Theory
Volume
17
Pages
553 - 579
No. of pages
27
ISSN
1097-3923
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12153
Publication date
08-2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502045 Behavioural economics, 502021 Microeconomics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Economics and Econometrics, Finance, Sociology and Political Science
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/corruption-in-committees-an-experimental-study-of-information-aggregation-through-voting(185dc08b-4577-4343-a90a-2e43125fc516).html