TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Ben-Yashar, Ruth
AU  - Danziger, Leif
        TI  - On the Optimal Composition of Committees
        PY  - 2014/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 7963
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp7963
        AB  - This paper derives a simple characterization of how to optimally divide an organization's experts into different decision-making committees. The focus is on many three-member committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. We find that the allocation of experts to committees is optimal if and only if it minimizes the sum of the products of the experts' skills in each committee. As a result, given the experts of any two committees, the product of the experts' skills should be as similar as possible in the two committees, and it is never optimal to have the three worst experts in one committee and the three best experts in another.
        KW  - optimal composition of committees
KW  - simple majority rule
        ER  -