Bot Got Your Tongue? Social Learning with Timidity and Noise

John W.E. Cremin ()
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John W.E. Cremin: Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France, https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/en/members/cremin

No 2526, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: Models of social learning conventionally assume that all actions are visible, whereas in reality, we can often choose whether or not to advertise our choices. Inthis paper, I study a model of sequential social learning in which social agents choose whether or not to let successors see their action, only wanting to do so if they are sufficiently confident in their choice (they are timid), and noise agents act randomly. I find that in sparse networks, this produces a form of unravelling to the effect that noise agents are overrepresented. This can damage learning to an arbitrary extent if social agents are sufficiently timid. In dense networks, however, no such unravelling occurs, and the combination of noise and timidity can facilitate complete learning even with bounded beliefs.

Keywords: Sequential Social Learning; Endogenous Social Networks; Network Theory; Information Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2025-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2526

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