Same process, different outcomes: group performance in an acquiring a company experiment

Marco Casari, Jingjing Zhang and Christine Jackson
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Christine Jackson: Purdue University

Experimental Economics, 2016, vol. 19, issue 4, No 5, 764-791

Abstract: Abstract It is still an open question when groups perform better than individuals in intellective tasks. We report that in an Acquiring a Company game, what prevailed when there was disagreement among group members was the median proposal and not the best proposal. This aggregation rule explains why groups underperformed with respect to a “truth wins” benchmark and why they performed better than individuals deciding in isolation in a simple version of the task but worse in the more difficult version. Implications are drawn on when to employ groups rather than individuals in decision making.

Keywords: Winner’s curse; Group decision making; Communication; Risky shift; Herd behavior; C91; C92; D03; D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Same Process, Different Outcomes: Group Performance in an Acquiring a Company Experiment (2015)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-015-9467-7

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