Optimal Delay in Committees

Abstract

Delay after disagreement in committee decision making may foster information aggregation but is costly ex post. When there is an upper bound on delay that can be credibly imposed, repeated delays can improve the ex ante welfare of committee members. An ex ante optimal dynamic delay mechanism does not impose the maximum credible delay after each disagreement. Instead, it induces in equilibrium start-and-stop cycles where players alternate between making the maximum concession to avoid disagreement and making no concession at all. The start-and-stop feature is robust to modeling delay cost by discounting instead of money-burning, and the optimal mechanism is shown to be “redesign-proof” when there is also an upper bound on the number of rounds of delay that can be credibly imposed.