We show that far from capturing a formally new phenomenon, informational herding is really a special case of single-person experimentation ­ and 'bad herds' the typical failure of complete learning. We then analyze the analogous team equilibrium, where individuals maximize the present...

We prove that the recently proposed informational herding models are but special cases of a standard single person experimentation model with myopia. We then re-interpret the incorrect herding outcome as a familiar failure of complete learning in a optimal experimentation problem. We next...

This chapter develops a unified modeling framework for analyzing the strategic behavior of forecasters. The theoretical model encompasses reputational objectives, competition for the best accuracy, and bias. Also drawing from the extensive literature on analysts, we review the empirical evidence...