Rational Groupthink
Abstract
We study how long-lived rational agents learn from repeatedly observing a private signal and each others' actions. With normal signals, a group of any size learns more slowly than just four agents who directly observe each others' private signals in each period. Similar results apply to general signal structures. We identify rational groupthink—in which agents ignore their private signals and choose the same action for long periods of time—as the cause of this failure of information aggregation.
Additional Information
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Published: 08 July 2020. We thank seminar audiences in Berkeley, Berlin, Bonn, Caltech, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Duke, Harvard, Medellın, Microsoft Research New England, MIT, Montreal, NYU, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Princeton, San Diego, UPenn, USC, Washington University, and Yale, as well as Nageeb Ali, Ben Brooks, Dirk Bergemann, Kim Border, Federico Echenique, Wade Hann-Caruthers, Benjamin Golub, RainieHeck, Paul Heidhues, Shachar Kariv, Navin Kartik, StevenMorris, Luciano Pomatto, Larry Samuelson, Lones Smith, Juuso Toikka, Leeat Yariv, and others for insightful comments and discussions. Matan Harel was partially supported by the IDEX grant of Paris-Saclay. Elchanan Mossel is supported by ONR grant N00014-16-1-2227 and NSF grant CCF 1320105. Omer Tamuz was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (#419427).Attached Files
Published - qjaa026.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v1.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v2.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v3.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v4.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v5.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v6.pdf
Submitted - 1412.7172v7.pdf
Supplemental Material - qjaa026_online_appendix.pdf
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Additional details
- Alternative title
- On the Speed of Social Learning
- Alternative title
- When more information reduces the speed of learning
- Alternative title
- The Speed of Social Learning
- Alternative title
- Groupthink and the Failure of Information Aggregation in Large Groups
- Eprint ID
- 71957
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161111-135545798
- Paris-Saclay
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- N00014-16-1-2227
- NSF
- CCF-1320105
- Simons Foundation
- 419427
- Created
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2016-11-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field