Social Learning with Costly Search

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mueller-Frank, Manuel; Pai, Mallesh M.
• 署名单位: University of Navarra; IESE Business School; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20130253
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 83-109
• 关键词: information; BEHAVIOR

摘要

We study a sequential social learning model where agents privately acquire information by costly search. Search costs of agents are private, and are independently and identically distributed. We show that asymptotic learning occurs if and only if search costs are not bounded away from zero. We explicitly characterize equilibria for the case of two actions, and show that the probability of late moving agents taking the suboptimal action vanishes at a linear rate. Social welfare converges to the social optimum as the discount rate converges to one if and only if search costs are not bounded away from zero.