Committees, Sequential Voting and Transparency

We propose a two-period model of a committee with sequentially voting members, who may differ in their degree of efficiency. In this model we examine whether the publication of the committee's voting records is desirable. We show that first-period welfare is higher if voting records remain secret because transparency induces less efficient committee members to vote in a socially suboptimal manner. In the second period, the impact of transparency is ambiguous. Overall welfare is higher under opacity in most cases. A transparent voting process may not induce herding, when the government's takes account of the exact sequence of votes