The Emergence of Fads in a Changing World

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Huang, Wanying
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Huang, Wanying
author_facet Huang, Wanying
contents We study how fads emerge under social learning in a changing environment. We consider a simple sequential social learning model where rational agents arrive in order, each acting only once, and the underlying unknown state constantly evolves. Each agent receives a private signal, observes all past actions of others, and chooses an action to match the current state. Because the state changes over time, cascades cannot last forever, and actions also fluctuate. We show that despite the rise of temporary information cascades, in the long run, actions change more often than the state. This result provides a theoretical foundation for faddish behavior in which people often change their actions more frequently than necessary.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2208_14570
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Emergence of Fads in a Changing World
Huang, Wanying
Theoretical Economics
We study how fads emerge under social learning in a changing environment. We consider a simple sequential social learning model where rational agents arrive in order, each acting only once, and the underlying unknown state constantly evolves. Each agent receives a private signal, observes all past actions of others, and chooses an action to match the current state. Because the state changes over time, cascades cannot last forever, and actions also fluctuate. We show that despite the rise of temporary information cascades, in the long run, actions change more often than the state. This result provides a theoretical foundation for faddish behavior in which people often change their actions more frequently than necessary.
title The Emergence of Fads in a Changing World
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.14570