Moral cost, commitment and committee size

Huck, S.; Konrad, K. A.

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Paper

Moral cost, commitment and committee size

MPS-Authors

There are no MPG-Authors in the publication available

External Resource

http://ssrn.com/abstract=505023
(Any fulltext)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Huck, S., & Konrad, K. A. (2003). Moral cost, commitment and committee size. WZB, Markets and Political Economy Working Paper, No. SP II 2003-31.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0024-3B5E-D

Abstract

Consider a committee that in the past has made a promise not confiscate the profits from a foreign investor. After the investment has taken place, there is a material benefit if the committee decides to default on the earlier promise. But there are also some small moral costs for those who vote in favor of default. We show that in such situations small committees are more likely to default than large committees. Thus, constituencies can decide about degrees of commitment by choosing committee sizes appropriately. Experimental data confirms our predictions.