Speaker: Simona Fabrizi (Department of Economics, University of Auckland)

Title of the talk: “The Good, The Bad, and The Not So Ugly: Unanimity Voting with Ambiguous Information” based on a joint paper with Addison Pan

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday, 3 August 2017,  2:00-3:00 pm, [Room Change!] now room 260-307 [Business School Building, Level 3]

Abstract: “Collective decision-making leads to poorer quality decisions under the unanimity voting rule than under majority voting especially as the size of the group grows larger, due to the tendency for strategic decision-makers to vote more often against their private information. In jury trials, for instance, it is well-established that strategic voting is responsible for the paradoxical result that the more demanding the hurdle for conviction is, the more likely it is that a jury will convict an innocent defendant. We challenge these findings, by exploring collective decision-making under alternative voting rules when decision-makers face an ambiguous information structure. Specifically, we investigate voting behaviour by ambiguity-averse voters, who are MaxMin Expected Utility Maximizers, demonstrating that unanimity voting is compatible with instances of informative voting, outperforming other voting rules, such as majority voting.”

Everyone welcome!