Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Mar, 2000, Volume 68, Issue 2

Pathological Outcomes of Observational Learning

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0262.00113
p. 371-398

Lones Smith, Peter Sørensen

This paper explores how Bayes‐rational individuals learn sequentially from the discrete actions of others. Unlike earlier informational herding papers, we admit heterogeneous preferences. Not only may type‐specific ‘herds’ eventually arise, but a new robust possibility emerges: . Beliefs may converge to a limit point where history offers no decisive lessons for anyone, and each type's actions forever nontrivially split between two actions. To verify that our identified limit outcomes do arise, we exploit the Markov‐martingale character of beliefs. Learning dynamics are stochastically stable near a fixed point in many Bayesian learning models like this one.


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