Absolutely expedient imitative behavior (Q1417440)

The author analyzes a model of learning by imitation, where besides the decision maker, there is a population of individuals facing the same decision problem. He gives a simple characterization of the expediency property and shows that its basic feature is proportional imitation; the change in the probability attached to the played action is proportional to the difference between the received and the ``sampled payoff'' (which plays the role of an aspiration level).