Economics Commons^™

We analyze different committee designs in a model with the endogenous participation of experts who have private information about their own abilities. Each committee design involves a test of abilities whose accuracy influences experts’ decisions to participate. We derive the following findings. First, higher wages lead to lower quality experts. Second, an increase in transparency improves the quality of experts on the committee. Third, larger committees attract less able experts than smaller ones, unless the committee operates under full transparency. Fourth, we derive the properties of optimal committees. They involve low wages and can be transparent or opaque.