The speed of sequential asymptotic learning

DOI10.1016/J.JET.2017.11.009zbMATH Open1400.91098arXiv1707.02689OpenAlexW2596597071WikidataQ59926985 ScholiaQ59926985MaRDI QIDQ1693201FDOQ1693201

Authors: Wade Hann-Caruthers, Vadim V. Martynov, Omer Tamuz 

Publication date: 11 January 2018

Published in: Journal of Economic Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In the classical herding literature, agents receive a private signal regarding a binary state of nature, and sequentially choose an action, after observing the actions of their predecessors. When the informativeness of private signals is unbounded, it is known that agents converge to the correct action and correct belief. We study how quickly convergence occurs, and show that it happens more slowly than it does when agents observe signals. However, we also show that the speed of learning from actions can be arbitrarily close to the speed of learning from signals. In particular, the expected time until the agents stop taking the wrong action can be either finite or infinite, depending on the private signal distribution. In the canonical case of Gaussian private signals we calculate the speed of convergence precisely, and show explicitly that, in this case, learning from actions is significantly slower than learning from signals.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.02689

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zbMATH Keywords

herd behaviorsocial learning

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Social networks; opinion dynamics (91D30) Rationality and learning in game theory (91A26)

Cites Work

• The maxmin of recursive games with incomplete information on one side
• Bayesian learning in social networks
• Pathological Outcomes of Observational Learning
• Information percolation with equilibrium search dynamics
• How Fast do Rational Agents Learn?

Cited In (9)

• Pathological Outcomes of Observational Learning
• Fast learning rates in statistical inference through aggregation
• Quickest Search and Learning Over Correlated Sequences: Theory and Application
• How fragile are information cascades?
• On the role of responsiveness in rational herds
• On the asymptotic behaviour of linear learning processes with partial forgetting
• Identifiable information structures
• Fast rates by transferring from auxiliary hypotheses
• Learning from reviews: the selection effect and the speed of learning

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