Social Sciences Brown Bag Seminar
Baxter 125
The speed of social learning
Omer Tamuz,
Assistant Professor of Economics,
Humanities and Social Sciences,
Caltech,
Joint with Matan Harel, Elchanan Mossel, Philipp Strack
Abstract
We consider two Bayesian agents who learn from exogenously provided private signals, as well as the actions of the other. Our main finding is that increased interaction between the agents can lower the speed of learning: when both agents observe each other, learning is significantly slower than it is when one only observes the other. This slowdown is driven by a process in which a consensus on the wrong action causes the agents to discount new contrary evidence.
For more information, please contact Sheryl Cobb by phone at 626-395-4220 or by email at [email protected].
Event Series
Social Sciences Brown Bag Seminar Series