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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 375-402 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Theory |
Volume | 154 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2014 |