In the context of a two-state, two-trader financial market herd model introduced by Avery and Zemsky (1998) we investigate how informational ambiguity in conjunction with waves of optimism and pessimism affect investor behavior, social learning and price dynamics. Without ambiguity, neither...

In the context of a two-state, two-trader financial market herd model introduced by Avery and Zemsky (1998) we investigate how informational ambiguity in conjunction with waves of optimism and pessimism affect investor behavior, social learning and price dynamics. Without ambiguity, neither...

We study the long-run stability of trade networks in a two-sided economy of agents labelled men and women. Each agent desires relationships with the other type, but having multiple partners is costly. This cost-bene?t trade-o¤ results in each agent having a single-peaked utility over the number...

The literature on informational cascades and herding theory has for a decade focused on the externality and suboptimal outcomes generated from decision-making when spaces are coarser than private information spaces. Much of the output has therefore been positive, not normative. This paper...

Observational learning occurs when privately informed individuals sequentially choose among finitely many actions after seeing predecessors’ choices. We summarise the general theory of this paradigm: belief convergence forces action convergence; specifically, copycat ‘herds’...