Collective experimentation: A laboratory study

Abstract

We develop a simple model of collective experimentation and take it to the lab. In equilibrium, as in the recent work of Strulovici (2010), majority rule has a bias toward under experimentation, as good news for a minority of voters may lead a majority of voters to abandon a policy when each of them thinks it is likely that the policy will be passed by a future majority excluding them. We compare the behavior in the lab of groups under majority rule and under the optimal voting rule, which precludes voting in intermediate stages of the policy experiment. Surprisingly, simple majority performs better than the (theoretically) optimal voting rule. Majority rule seems to be more robust than other forms of voting when players make mistakes.

The Politics of Bargaining as a Group

“…Our work relates more distantly to the literature on experimentation, e.g., Strulovici (2010), Anesi and Bowen (2021) and Bowen, Hwang and Krasa (2022);Freer, Martinelli and Wang (2020) survey recent contributions. Nevertheless, the strategic interaction with a privately informed external party in our model yields a learning technology that is fundamentally different from the experimentation literature.…”

Deciding When to Decide: Collective Deliberation and Obstruction

“…As our model is one of collective learning, what we do is also related to the growing literature on collective experimentation, pioneered by Strulovici (2010)-for a recent discussion of this literature, see Freer et al (2020). In those models, committee members also collectively learn about the types of feasible policies, but learning about the merits of a given policy requires that it be implemented.…”