English

Phase transition and information cascade in a voting model

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2015-05-13 v2 Physics and Society

Abstract

We introduce a voting model that is similar to a Keynesian beauty contest and analyze it from a mathematical point of view. There are two types of voters-copycat and independent-and two candidates. Our voting model is a binomial distribution (independent voters) doped in a beta binomial distribution (copycat voters). We find that the phase transition in this system is at the upper limit of tt, where tt is the time (or the number of the votes). Our model contains three phases. If copycats constitute a majority or even half of the total voters, the voting rate converges more slowly than it would in a binomial distribution. If independents constitute the majority of voters, the voting rate converges at the same rate as it would in a binomial distribution. We also study why it is difficult to estimate the conclusion of a Keynesian beauty contest when there is an information cascade.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.4818,
  title  = {Phase transition and information cascade in a voting model},
  author = {Masato Hisakado and Shintaro Mori},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.4818},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:29:47.385Z