Let the Experts Decide? Asymmetric Information, Abstention, and Coordination in Standing Committees1

We examine abstention when voters in standing committees are asymmetrically informed and there are multiple pure strategy equilibriaswing voters curse (SVC) equilibria where voters with low quality information abstain and equilibria when all participants vote their information. When the asymmetry in information quality is large, we \u85nd that voting groups largely coor-dinate on the SVC equilibrium which is also Pareto Optimal. However, we \u85nd that when the asymmetry in information quality is not large and the Pareto Optimal equilibrium is for all to participate, signi\u85cant numbers of voters with low quality information abstain. Furthermore, we nd that information asymmetry induces voters with low quality information to coordinate on a non-equilibrium outcome. This suggests that coordination on "letting the experts " decide is a likely voting norm that sometimes validates SVC equilibrium predictions but other times does not. Individuals make binary decisions by majority voting in many contexts from elections to legislatures to city councils to faculty department meetings to juries. A central question in the literature on formal models of voting has been the extent that majority voting leads t