Word-of-Mouth Communication and Social Learning

@article{citeulike:1866360, abstract = {This paper studies the way that word-of-mouth communication aggregates the information of individual agents. We find that the structure of the communication process determines whether all agents end up making identical choices, with less communication making this conformity more likely. Despite the players' naive decision rules and the stochastic decision environment, word-of-mouth communication may lead all players to adopt the action that is on average superior. These socially efficient outcomes tend to occur when each agent samples only a few others.}, author = {Ellison, Glenn and Fudenberg, Drew }, citeulike-article-id = {1866360}, journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics}, keywords = {poum}, number = {1}, pages = {93--125}, posted-at = {2007-11-05 03:39:01}, priority = {2}, title = {Word-of-Mouth Communication and Social Learning}, url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2118512}, volume = {110}, year = {1995} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1866360 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1866360 TI - Word-of-Mouth Communication and Social Learning JF - The Quarterly Journal of Economics VL - 110 IS - 1 SP - 93 EP - 125 N2 - This paper studies the way that word-of-mouth communication aggregates the information of individual agents. We find that the structure of the communication process determines whether all agents end up making identical choices, with less communication making this conformity more likely. Despite the players' naive decision rules and the stochastic decision environment, word-of-mouth communication may lead all players to adopt the action that is on average superior. These socially efficient outcomes tend to occur when each agent samples only a few others. KW - poum AU - Ellison, Glenn AU - Fudenberg, Drew PY - 1995/// UR - http://www.jstor.org/stable/2118512 ER -