ICES Experimental Economics Brown Bag Lecture
Sequential Information Acquisition in Committees: Theory and Experiments
Thursday, October 8, 2026 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Vernon Smith Hall (formerly Metropolitan Building), Room 5075
The Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES) presents an ICES Brown Bag Lecture featuring:
George Mason University
Sequential Information Acquisition in Committees: Theory and Experiments
Abstract
We study the effect of the timing of communication on collective decisions when information is individually costly. We design an experiment to compare the amount of information acquisition and average accuracy of different communication structures (a committee that cannot communicate, a committee that can only communicate after information acquisition, and a committee whose members acquire information then communicate before the next member moves). We present preliminary results. We find that, contrary to theory point predictions, subjects in the three conditions buy signals at similar rates. Despite this, the Sequential Buying condition has a higher point-estimate accuracy than the other two conditions, although the differences are not statistically significant at conventional levels. We estimate an agent quantal response equilibrium model to explain the frequent fabrication of signals that we observe.
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