We study observational learning in environments with congestion costs: an agent's payoff from choosing an action decreases as more predecessors choose that action. Herds cannot occur if congestion on every action can get so large that an agent prefers a different action regardless of his beliefs...

In social-learning environments, we investigate implications of the assumption that people naively believe that each previous person's action reflects solely that person's private information, leading them to systematically imitate all predecessors even in the many circumstances where rational...

There is evidence that people do not fully take into account how other people’s actions are contingent on these others’ information. This paper defines and applies a new equilibrium concept in games with private information, "cursed equilibrium", which assumes that each player correctly...

In social-learning environments, we investigate implications of the assumption that people naïvely believe that each previous person's action reflects solely that person's private information. Naïve herders inadvertently over-weight early movers' private signals by neglecting that interim...

There is evidence that people do not fully take into account how other people's actions depend on these other people's information. This paper defines and applies a new equilibrium concept in games with private information, cursed equilibrium, which assumes that each player correctly predicts...

This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then candidates from these parties compete for votes in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters. Departing from their...

This paper proposes a model that explains the nonneutrality of money from two well-documented psychological assumptions. The model incorporates into the general-equilibrium monopolistic-competition framework of Blanchard and Kiyotaki [1987] the psychological assumptions that (1) consumers...

This paper explains the nonneutrality of money from two assumptions: (1) consumers dislike paying prices that exceed some fair markup on firms' marginal costs; and (2) consumers under infer marginal costs from available information. After an increase in money supply, consumers underappreciate...

This paper explains the nonneutrality of money from two assumptions: (1) consumers dislike paying prices that exceed some fair markup on firms’ marginal costs; and (2) consumers under infer marginal costs from available information. After an increase in money supply, consumers underappreciate...

This paper proposes a model that explains the nonneutrality of money from two well-documented psychological assumptions. The model incorporates into the general-equilibrium monopolistic-competition framework of Blanchard and Kiyotaki [1987] the psychological assumptions that (1) consumers...