Individual vs. group decision-making: Evidence from a natural experiment in arbitration proceedings
中文摘要
理解群体决策与个人决策之间系统性差异的重要性已在文献中得到充分认识。然而,关于这一问题的绝大多数经验证据来自实验室实验,因而无法反映职业激励与职业关注,而这两者都可能发挥关键作用。为填补这一空白,我利用一项独特的监管变革——该变革外生地将美国金融业监管局(FINRA)仲裁中某一特定类别案件的首席仲裁员人数从三人减至一人——以及一套原创的仲裁裁决数据集。研究结果表明,与独任仲裁员相比,三人仲裁庭会作出更为极端的“全有或全无”式裁决。仲裁员固定效应模型证实,这一倾向在仲裁员个体内部同样存在,从而排除了该效应源于仲裁员进入仲裁庭时差异化选择的可能性。相反,证据表明,群体为个体仲裁员提供了“匿名盾牌”,缓解了他们对极端裁决可能带来不利声誉影响的担忧。
Abstract
The importance of understanding the systematic differences between group and individual decisions has been well recognized in the literature. However, the vast majority of empirical evidence on this issue is derived from laboratory experiments, and hence does not reflect professional incentives and career concerns, both of which may play a crucial role. To fill this gap, I exploit a unique regulatory change that exogenously decreased the number of presiding arbitrators from three to one for a specific class of cases in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration and an original data set of arbitration awards. The findings indicate that panels of three arbitrators render more extreme “all or nothing” awards compared to sole arbitrators. An arbitrator fixed effects model confirms that this tendency is also present within arbitrators, thus ruling out that the effect is driven by differential selection of arbitrators into panels. Rather, evidence suggests that groups provide individual arbitrators with a “shield of anonymity” which mitigates their concerns about adverse reputational effects of extreme decisions.