Observational learning is typically examined when agents have precise information about their position in the sequence of play. We present a model in which agents are uncertain about their positions. Agents sample the decisions of past individuals and receive a private signal about the state of the world. We show that social learning is robust to position uncertainty. Under any sampling rule satisfying a stationarity assumption, learning is complete if signal strength is unbounded. In cases with bounded signal strength, we provide a lower bound on information aggregation: individuals do at least as well as an agent with the strongest signal realizations would do in isolation. Finally, we show in a simple environment that position uncertainty slows down learning but not to a great extent.

Observational learning with position uncertainty

Monzon I
;
2014-01-01

Abstract

Observational learning is typically examined when agents have precise information about their position in the sequence of play. We present a model in which agents are uncertain about their positions. Agents sample the decisions of past individuals and receive a private signal about the state of the world. We show that social learning is robust to position uncertainty. Under any sampling rule satisfying a stationarity assumption, learning is complete if signal strength is unbounded. In cases with bounded signal strength, we provide a lower bound on information aggregation: individuals do at least as well as an agent with the strongest signal realizations would do in isolation. Finally, we show in a simple environment that position uncertainty slows down learning but not to a great extent.
2014
154
375
402
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053114001331
Social learning; Complete learning; Information aggregation
Monzon I; Rapp M
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/1768197
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