Preferences, Information and Incentives in Committee Decisions

委员会决策中的偏好、信息和激励

• 批准号: 0214436
• 负责人: Hongbin Cai
• 金额: $ 8.12万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-08-01 至 2004-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0214436&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Preferences; Information; Incentives; Committee; Decisions

Committees play critical roles in collective decision-making such as in Congress and in many other situations (e.g., board of directors, universities, jury, sports judging): they gather and report information, propose and choose policies. Severe incentive problems may arise in the committee decision-making process when committee members have different policy preferences and/or different information. In such circumstances, what are the important factors affecting effective committee decision-making and how should committees be structured to facilitate it? This research project will develop several mathematical models of committee decisions to investigate various aspects of these questions. The first model focuses on the informational role of committees, in an environment where committee members may shirk in gathering information and may distort reports of their findings to manipulate collective decisions. Questions to study include how much information can be incorporated in the decisions and what is the optimal decision rule and optimal committee size. A second model is concerned with optimal voting rules for committees who vote on policy proposals developed by an agent, focusing on trade-offs among several effects: (1) information requirement for changing policies; (2) distortions by the agent; and (3) the agent's incentives to gather good information. In a third model, the bargaining approach is used to formulate the idea that efficiency of the committee's decision-making deteriorates with heterogeneity of its members' interests, because heterogeneity makes compromises among members more difficult. The research project will also investigate why monetary transfers are rarely observed in real world committee decisions, while theoretically they can be quite useful because they can reduce distribution effects of committee decisions by having winners compensate losers, thus enabling the committee to focus solely on the efficiency aspects of its decisions.Understanding committee decision-making is important for understanding real world institutions and policies, and may provide suggestions to make committee decision-making more effective. In recent years, research on committee decisions has broadened its scope to examine organizational features of committee decisions. This research project builds on the existing literature and tries to shed new light on several aspects of committee organizational structure. The results of the project may generate theoretical and practical implications on committee size, decision rules, voting rules, restrictions on transfers, etc.

委员会在集体决策中发挥关键作用，例如在国会和许多其他情况下（例如，董事会，大学，陪审团，体育裁判）：他们收集和报告信息，提出和选择政策。当委员会成员有不同的政策偏好和/或不同的信息时，在委员会决策过程中可能会出现严重的激励问题。在这种情况下，影响委员会有效决策的重要因素是什么？委员会应如何组织以促进有效决策？这个研究项目将开发几个委员会决策的数学模型来调查这些问题的各个方面。第一个模型侧重于委员会的信息作用，在一个环境中，委员会成员可能会逃避收集信息，并可能歪曲他们的调查结果报告，以操纵集体决策。要研究的问题包括决策中可以包含多少信息，什么是最优决策规则和最优委员会规模。第二个模型关注的是对代理制定的政策提案进行投票的委员会的最优投票规则，重点关注几种影响之间的权衡：(1)改变政策的信息需求；（二）代理人歪曲事实的；(3)代理人收集有益信息的动机。在第三个模型中，讨价还价的方法被用来阐述委员会的决策效率随着其成员利益的异质性而恶化，因为异质性使得成员之间的妥协更加困难。该研究项目还将调查为什么在现实世界的委员会决策中很少观察到货币转移，而理论上它们可能非常有用，因为它们可以通过让赢家补偿输家来减少委员会决策的分配效应，从而使委员会能够只关注其决策的效率方面。理解委员会决策对于理解现实世界的制度和政策非常重要，并可能为使委员会决策更有效提供建议。近年来，对委员会决策的研究扩大了其研究范围，以考察委员会决策的组织特征。本研究项目建立在现有文献的基础上，并试图对委员会组织结构的几个方面进行新的阐述。该项目的结果可能对委员会规模、决策规则、投票规则、转让限制等产生理论和实践意义。