How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment

Sebastian Fehrler and Niall Hughes

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 181-209

Abstract: We investigate the potential of transparency to influence committee decision-making. We present a model in which career concerned committee members receive private information of different type-dependent accuracy, deliberate, and vote. We study three levels of transparency under which career concerns are predicted to affect behavior differently and test the model's key predictions in a laboratory experiment. The model's predictions are largely borne out—transparency negatively affects information aggregation at the deliberation and voting stages, leading to sharply different committee error rates than under secrecy. This occurs despite subjects revealing more information under transparency than theory predicts.

JEL-codes: C92 D72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20160046
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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Related works:
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: theory and Experiment (2015)
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (2015)
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (2015)
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (2015)
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (2015)
Working Paper: How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment (2014)
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