Should Straw Polls be Banned?

S. Nageeb Ali Ali () and Aislinn Bohren
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S. Nageeb Ali Ali: Department of Economics, Penn State University

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: A Principal appoints a committee of partially informed experts to choose a policy. The experts' preferences are aligned with each other but conflict with hers. We study whether she gains from banning committee members from communicating or "deliberating" before voting. Our main result is that if the committee plays its preferred equilibrium and the Principal must use a threshold voting rule, then she does not gain from banning deliberation. We show using examples how she can gain if she can choose the equilibrium played by the committee, or use a non-anonymous or non-monotone social choice rule.

Keywords: Information Aggregation; Committees; Deliberation; Collusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2018-09-20, Revised 2018-09-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: Should straw polls be banned? (2019)
Working Paper: Should Straw Polls be Banned? (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:18-022

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