A model of group decision-making is studied, in which one of two alternatives must be chosen. While group members differ in their valuations of the alternatives, everybody prefers some alternative to disagreement. Our model is distinguished by three features: private information regarding...

The phenomenon of choice shifts in group decision-making is fairly ubiquitous in the social psychology literature. Faced with a choice between a ‘safe’ and ‘risky’ decision, group members appear to move to one extreme or the other, relative to the choices each member might have made...

A model of group decision-making is studied, in which one of two alternatives must be chosen. While group members differ in their valuations of the alternatives, everybody prefers agreement to disagreement. Our model is distinguished by three features: private information regarding valuations,...

The phenomenon of choice shifts in group decision-making has received attention in the social psychology literature. Faced with a risky group decision, individuals appear to support more extreme choices relative to those they would make on their own. This paper demonstrates that from a...

The phenomenon of "choice shifts" in group decision-making is fairly ubiquitous in the social psychology literature. Faced with a choice between a ``safe" and ``risky" decision, group members appear to move to one extreme or the other, relative to the choices each member might have made on her...

In this paper we question the common wisdom that more polarized voters’ opinions imply larger policy polarization. We analyze a voting model in which the source of the polarization in voters’ opinions is “correlation neglect”, that is, voters neglect the correlation in their information...

In this paper we examine the long term effects of socialization and segregation in schools, on labour market outcomes. We incorporate a model of “informational” peer influence by which beliefs of pupils are affected by exposure to other pupils’ posterior beliefs. Specifically, we focus on...

We analyze preferences over redistribution in societies with costly (positive) sorting according to income. We identify a new motivation for redistribution, where individuals support taxation in order to reduce the incentives to sort. We characterize a simple condition over income distributions...

In this paper we offer a new theory of religion. Our theory relies on the assumption that individuals in society have different beliefs about the relation between their actions and the utility they gain in a strategic social interaction (specifically, a Prisoner's Dilemma). This heterogeneity of...