American Economic Review Vol. 90 No. 4 2000

Meetings with Costly Participation

Martin J. Osborne¹; Jeffrey S. Rosenthal²; Matthew A. Turner¹

¹ Department of Economics, 150 St. George Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5S 3G7. · ² Department of Statistics, 100 St. George Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5S 3G3.

Abstract

We study a collective decision-making process in which people interested in an issue may participate, at a cost, in a meeting, and the resulting decision is a compromise among the participants' preferences. We show that the equilibrium number of participants is small and their positions are extreme, and when the compromise is the median, the outcome is likely to be random. The model and its equilibria are consistent with evidence on the procedures and outcomes of U.S. regulatory hearings.

DOI

10.1257/aer.90.4.927

Volume

90

Issue

4

Pages

927-943

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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