Public versus Secret Voting in Committees

Andrea Mattozzi and Marcos Y. Nakaguma

No 17336, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the effect of transparency of individual votes in committees where members are heterogeneous in competence and bias, they are career-concerned, and they can abstain. We show that public voting attenuates the biases of competent members and secret voting attenuates the biases of incompetent members. Public voting leads to better decisions when the magnitude of the bias is large, while secret voting performs better otherwise. We present novel experimental evidence consistent with our theory.

Keywords: Committees; Voting; Career-concern; transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
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Related works:
Journal Article: Public Versus Secret Voting in Committees (2023)
Working Paper: Public versus Secret Voting in Committees (2017)
Working Paper: Public versus Secret Voting in Committees (2016)
Working Paper: Public versus Secret Voting in Committees (2016)
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