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Making Talk Cheap (and Problems Easy): How Legal and Political Institutions Can Facilitate Consensus
Author(s) -
Boudreau Cheryl,
McCubbins Mathew D.,
Rodriguez Daniel B.,
Weller Nicholas
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of empirical legal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1740-1461
pISSN - 1740-1453
DOI - 10.1111/j.1740-1461.2010.01198.x
Subject(s) - politics , active listening , consensus theory , cheap talk , public relations , law and economics , public economics , business , political science , economics , microeconomics , psychology , law , communication
In many legal, political, and social settings, people must reach a consensus before particular outcomes can be achieved and failing to reach a consensus may be costly. In this article, we present a theory and conduct experiments that take into account the costs associated with communicating, as well as the difficulty of the decisions that groups make. We find that when there is even a small cost (relative to the potential benefit) associated with sending information to others and/or listening, groups are much less likely to reach a consensus, primarily because they are less willing to communicate with one another. We also find that difficult problems significantly reduce group members’ willingness to communicate with one another and, therefore, hinder their ability to reach a consensus.