A resurrection of the Condorcet Jury Theorem

Balazs Szentes () and Yukio Koriyama ()
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Balazs Szentes: Department of Economics, University College London

Theoretical Economics, 2009, vol. 4, issue 2, pages 227-252

Abstract: This paper analyzes the optimal size of a deliberating committee where (i) there is no conflict of interest among individuals and (ii) information acquisition is costly. The committee members simultaneously decide whether to acquire information, and then make the ex-post efficient decision. The optimal committee size, k*, is shown to be bounded. The main result of this paper is that any arbitrarily large committee aggregates the decentralized information more efficiently than the committee of size k*-2. This result implies that oversized committees generate only small inefficiencies.

Keywords: Voting; information aggregation; costly information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009 Written

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:the:publsh:563

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