Related papers: How fragile are information cascades?
We study a sequential social learning model in which there is uncertainty about the informativeness of a common signal-generating process. Rational agents arrive in order and make decisions based on the past actions of others and their…
Research on information diffusion generally assumes complete knowledge of the underlying network. However, in the presence of factors such as increasing privacy awareness, restrictions on application programming interfaces (APIs) and…
We study a sequential-learning model featuring a network of naive agents with Gaussian information structures. Agents apply a heuristic rule to aggregate predecessors' actions. They weigh these actions according the strengths of their…
We consider the problem of generating correlated random variables in a distributed fashion, where communication is constrained to a cascade network. The first node in the cascade observes an i.i.d. sequence $X^n$ locally before initiating…
An agent acquires information dynamically until her belief about a binary state reaches an upper or lower threshold. She can choose any signal process subject to a constraint on the rate of entropy reduction. Strategies are ordered by "time…
We analyze boundedly rational updating from aggregate statistics in a model with binary actions and binary states. Agents each take an irreversible action in sequence after observing the unordered set of previous actions. Each agent first…
An agent has access to multiple information sources, each of which provides information about a different attribute of an unknown state. Information is acquired continuously -- where the agent chooses both which sources to sample from, and…
This paper studies prototypical strategies to sequentially aggregate independent decisions. We consider a collection of agents, each performing binary hypothesis testing and each obtaining a decision over time. We assume the agents are…
Information and individual activities often spread globally through the network of social ties. While social contagion phenomena have been extensively studied within the framework of threshold models, it is common to make an assumption that…
We propose a method of detecting non-self-correcting information cascades in experiments in which subjects choose an option sequentially by observing the choices of previous subjects. The method uses the correlation function $C(t)$ between…
Integrating information gained by observing others via Social Bayesian Learning can be beneficial for an agent's performance, but can also enable population wide information cascades that perpetuate false beliefs through the agent…
This paper analyzes a dynamic interaction between a fully rational, privately informed sender and a boundedly rational, uninformed receiver with memory constraints. The sender controls the flow of information, while the receiver designs a…
There is a commonality among contagious diseases, tweets, urban crimes, nuclear reactions, and neuronal firings that past events facilitate the future occurrence of events. The spread of events has been extensively studied such that the…
We consider an infinite collection of agents who make decisions, sequentially, about an unknown underlying binary state of the world. Each agent, prior to making a decision, receives an independent private signal whose distribution depends…
In the classical herding model, asymptotic learning refers to situations where individuals eventually take the correct action regardless of their private information. Classical results identify classes of information structures for which…
We study the effect of imperfect memory on decision making in the context of a stochastic sequential action-reward problem. An agent chooses a sequence of actions which generate discrete rewards at different rates. She is allowed to make…
How does temporally structured private and social information shape collective decisions? To address this question we consider a network of rational agents who independently accumulate private evidence that triggers a decision upon reaching…
We consider social learning where agents can only observe part of the population (modeled as neighbors on an undirected graph), face many decision problems, and arrival order of the agents is unknown. The central question we pose is whether…
Social learning refers to the process by which networked strategic agents learn an unknown state of the world by observing private state-related signals as well as other agents' actions. In their classic work, Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and…
We consider the problem of sequentially making decisions that are rewarded by "successes" and "failures" which can be predicted through an unknown relationship that depends on a partially controllable vector of attributes for each instance.…