Committee Search: Evaluating One or Multiple Candidates at a Time?

  • Datum:

    27. November 2019

  • Referent:

    Tobias Rachidi

  • Quelle:

    Universität Bonn

  • This paper studies committee search where members either assess candidates "one at a time", i.e., on a rolling basis, or they simultaneously evaluate a set of candidates of fixed size. The former search procedure has been
    studied before, whereas the exploration of the latter search technology is novel in the committee search literature. We compare both search procedures in terms of acceptance standards and welfare. Generally, the superiority of
    one or the other search technology depends on the voting rule and the specification of search costs associated with the simultaneous evaluation of multiple candidates. The adoption of a qualified majority rule changes the
    evaluation of search procedures compared to the ranking under the unanimity rule, revealing that the presence of a search committee fundamentally alters the search problem in comparison with the single decision-maker case. This is the main qualitative insight of this paper and we discuss its implications for committee search in practice.