Persuasion and transparency

An advisory committee with common values and asymmetric information provides a recommendation to a decision maker facing a binary choice. We investigate the effect of a transparency requirement—requiring committee members’ actions to be observable—on the committee’s ability to influence the decision maker. We show that unless the preferences of the committee and decision maker are sufficiently close, requiring transparency eliminates the committee’s ability to provide any useful information. In contrast, if preferences are very close or if committee members are able to verifiably reveal their signals then transparency is beneficial.