The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 19 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Learning from Neighbours
Abstract
When payoffs from different actions are unknown, agents use their own past experience as well as the experience of their neighbours to guide their decision making. In this paper, we develop a general framework to study the relationship between the structure of these neighbourhoods and the process of social learning. We show that, in a connected society, local learning ensures that all agents obtain the same payoffs in the long run. Thus, if actions have different payoffs, then all agents choose the same action, and social conformism obtains. We develop conditions on the distribution of prior beliefs, the structure of neighbourhoods and the informativeness of actions under which this action is optimal. In particular, we identify a property of neighbourhood structures—local independence—which greatly facilitates social learning. Simulations of the model generate spatial and temporal patterns of adoption that are consistent with empirical work.
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Cites
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Adoption of Agricultural Innovations in Developing Countries: A Survey
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The diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa communities
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Medical Innovation: A Diffusion Study.
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Cited by
Bayesian Learning in Social Networks
Acemoglu, D., Dahleh, M. A., Lobel, I., & Ozdaglar, A. (2011) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1093/restud/rdr004 · Cited by 754
Social Interactions, Local Spillovers and Unemployment
Topa, G. (2001) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1111/1467-937x.00169 · Cited by 733
Opinion Dynamics and Learning in Social Networks
Acemoglu, D., & Ozdaglar, A. (2011) · Dynamic Games and Applications · doi:10.1007/s13235-010-0004-1 · Cited by 705
Spread of (mis)information in social networks
Acemoglu, D., Ozdaglar, A., & ParandehGheibi, A. (2010) · Games and Economic Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.geb.2010.01.005 · Cited by 444
Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds
Becker, J., Brackbill, D., & Centola, D. (2017) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1615978114 · Cited by 397
Metadata
- Authors
- Bala, V., & Goyal, S.
- Venue
- Review of Economic Studies
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1998-07
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 595-621
- ISSN
- 0034-6527 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-937X
- OpenAlex
- W2034586501
- Cited by
- 746
- References
- 19
- FWCI
- 11.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
