Observational learning with position uncertainty

Ignacio Monzón*, Michael Rapp

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    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 languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)375-402
    Number of pages28
    JournalJournal of Economic Theory
    Volume154
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2014

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Observational learning with position uncertainty'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this