Economic Decision-Making in Groups: An Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Group Size and Gender Composition.

公司、组织和日常生活中的许多决策不是由个人做出的，而是由团体成员共同做出的。例如，解决复杂问题、制定战略、公司和组织中的合规行为以及与其他各方讨价还价。本项目涉及关于这种非正式群体决策的两个主要研究问题：1)团队规模如何系统性地影响团队决策？现有的关于群体决策的实验研究绝大多数集中在二元组或三元组(即分别由两人和三人组成的小组)以及与个人决策的比较。当群体规模从两人增加到三人或更大的群体时，人们对系统的影响知之甚少。然而，这是一个与经验相关的案例，因为公司和组织中的团队通常比二元或三元组更大。此外，增加集团规模预计会产生抵消效应，因此尚不清楚最优集团规模可能是多少。群体性别构成对群体决策有何影响？关于偏好上的性别差异如何影响个人决策，存在着大量的实验文献。然而，没有系统的证据表明，这种个人层面的性别差异在群体环境中是被放大了还是被削弱了。通过分析相对较大的群体中性别构成的影响，我们可以阐明这个问题，并为更好地理解行为中的性别差异做出贡献。通过进行五个实验室实验，每个实验包括与不同规模的群体的非正式群体决策，我们希望朝着缩小上述文献差距迈出第一步。因此，我们希望将重点放在决策的三个不同领域(智力、判断和战略)，以提供跨不同任务类型的证据。

Many decisions in firms, organizations, and everyday life are not taken by individuals, but instead jointly by the members of a group. Examples include solving complex problems, devising strategies, compliance behavior in firms and organizations, and bargaining with other parties. This project is concerned with two main research questions regarding such informal group decision-making:1.) How does group size systematically affect the decision-making of groups? The vast majority of existing experimental studies on group decisions has focused on dyads or triads (i.e. groups of two and three members respectively) and the comparison with individual decision-making. Very little is known about the systematic effects when the group size is increased from two to three members or to even larger groups. This is, however, an empirically relevant case, since teams in firms and organizations are often larger than dyads or triads. Moreover, countervailing effects are expected from increasing the group size, such that it remains unclear what an optimal group size might be.2.) How are group decisions affected by the group gender composition? There exists an extensive experimental literature on how gender differences in preferences affect individual decision-making. However, there is no systematic evidence, whether such gender differences at the individual level are amplified or attenuated in group settings. By analyzing the effects of the gender composition in relatively large groups, we can shed light on this issue and contribute to the overall agenda towards a better understanding of gender differences in behavior.By running five laboratory experiments, each including informal group decision-making with groups of different size, we want to take a first step towards narrowing the literature gaps mentioned above. We thereby want to focus on three different areas of decision-making (intellective, judgmental and strategic) to provide evidence across different task types.