INFLUENTIAL OPINION LEADERS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Loeper, Antoine; Steiner, Jakub; Stewart, Colin
• 署名单位: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Charles University Prague; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12100
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 1147-1167
• 关键词: regime change; global games; INFORMATION; revolution; COORDINATION; diffusion; networks; cascades; Activism; ATTACKS

摘要

We present a two-stage coordination game in which early choices of experts with special interests are observed by followers who move in the second stage. We show that the equilibrium outcome is biased towards the experts' interests even though followers know the distribution of expert interests. Expert influence is fully decentralised in the sense that each individual expert has a negligible impact. The bias in favour of experts results from a social learning effect that is multiplied through a coordination motive. We apply our results to the onset of social movements and to the diffusion of products with network externalities.