American Economic Journal:
Microeconomics
ISSN 1945-7669 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7685 (Online)
Naïve Herding in Rich-Information Settings
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
vol. 2,
no. 4, November 2010
(pp. 221–43)
Abstract
In social-learning environments, we investigate implications of the assumption that people naïvely believe that each previous person's action reflects solely that person's private information. Naïve herders inadvertently over-weight early movers' private signals by neglecting that interim herders' actions also embed these signals. Such "social confirmation bias" leads them to herd with positive probability on incorrect actions even in extremely rich-information settings where rational players never do. Moreover, because they become fully confident even when wrong, naïve herders can be harmed, on average, by observing others. (JEL D82, D83)Citation
Eyster, Erik, and Matthew Rabin. 2010. "Naïve Herding in Rich-Information Settings." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2 (4): 221–43. DOI: 10.1257/mic.2.4.221Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment