Committees versus individuals: an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision-making

We report the results of an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision-making under uncertainty. A large sample of economically literate students from the London School of Economics played a simple monetary policy game, as both individuals and committees of five players. Our findings - that groups make better decisions than individuals - accord with previous work by Blinder and Morgan. The experiment also attempted to establish why group decision-making is superior: although some improvement was related to committees taking decisions by majority voting, a significant additional committee benefit was associated with members being able to share information and observe each other's voting behaviour.