Interacting information cascades: on the movement of conventions between groups

James C. D. Fisher () and John Wooders
Additional contact information
James C. D. Fisher: Ford Motor Company

Economic Theory, 2017, vol. 63, issue 1, No 9, 231 pages

Abstract: Abstract When a decision maker is a member of multiple social groups, her actions may cause information to “spill over” from one group to another. We study the nature of these spillovers in an observational learning game where two groups interact via a common player, and where conventions emerge when players follow the decisions of the members of their own groups rather than their own private information. We show that: (i) if a convention develops in one group but not the other group, then the convention spills over via the common player; (ii) when conventions disagree, then the common player’s decision breaks the convention in one group; and (iii) when no convention has developed, then the common player’s decision triggers the same convention in both groups. We also show that information spillovers may reduce welfare, and we investigate the surplus-maximizing timing of spillovers.

Keywords: Cascades; Information spillovers; Observational learning; Social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D82 D83 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00199-016-1013-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joecth:v:63:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s00199-016-1013-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... eory/journal/199/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00199-016-1013-0

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Theory is currently edited by Nichoals Yanneils

More articles in Economic Theory from Springer, Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().