Resumo

HERRERA, Juan Pablo  e  LOZANO GERENA, Francisco. A MODEL OF HERDS AND SOCIAL LEARNING. Rev.econ.inst. [online]. 2005, vol.7, n.13, pp.133-157. ISSN 0124-5996.

One of the most frequent questions asked by economists is how individual members of societies make choices. It can be observed that economic agents imitate other agents’ actions. It should be asked why rational people choose to imitate other people’s behaviour and make decisions that are not based on their own private information. Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welch (1992) showed that fully rational agents, who understand the history of decision making, can generate this kind of behaviour. An important feature of this model is that once individuals begin to imitate others, the social learning process is halted. This paper shows that social learning occurs if agents have a continuum set of actions to choose from or if they just have a sample of the history. It also shows that this type of learning can occur within a herd.

Palavras-chave : herds; social learning; Bayesian update.

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