Viewpoint: Decision-making in committees

This article reviews recent developments in the theory of committee decision-making. A committee consists of self-interested members who make a public decision by aggregating imperfect information dispersed among them according to a pre-specified decision rule. We focus on costly information acquisition, strategic information aggregation, and rules and processes that enhance the quality of the committee decision. Seeming inefficiencies of the committee decision-making process such as over-cautiousness, voting, and delay emerge as partial remedies to these incentive problems. © 2009 Canadian Economics Association.link_to_subscribed_fulltex