Specialization and partisanship in committee search

A committee decides by unanimity whether to accept the current alternative, or to continue costly search. Each alternative is described by a vector of distinct attributes, and each committee member can privately assess the quality of one attribute (her “specialty”). Preferences are heterogeneous and interdependent: each specialist values all attributes, but puts a higher weight on her specialty (partisanship). We study how acceptance standards and members’ welfare vary with the amount of conflict within the committee. We also compare decisions made by committees consisting of specialized experts to decisions made by committees of generalists who can each assess all information available. The acceptance standard decreases (increases) in the degree of conflict when information is public (private). In both cases welfare decreases in the level of conflict. Finally, we identify situations where specialized committee decisions yield Pareto improvements over specialized, one-person decisions and over committee decisions made by generalists. ∗A previous version of this paper has been circulated under the title “Search Committees”. We wish to thank Philippe Jehiel, Phil Reny, Frank Rosar, three anonymous referees, and various seminar participants for helpful comments. The project has been initiated during Shi’s Humboldt Fellowship in Bonn. Moldovanu also wishes to thank the German Science Foundation and the European Research Council for financial support. Shi thanks SSHRC for financial support. †Moldovanu: Department of Economics, University of Bonn, [email protected]. Shi: Department of Economics, University of Toronto, [email protected].