Individual investors often invest actively and lose thereby. Social interaction seems to exacerbate this tendency. In our model, senders' propensity to discuss their strategies' returns, and receivers' propensity to be converted, are increasing in sender return. A distinctive implication is that...

An information cascade is a situation in which an agent who observes others chooses the same action irrespective of the value of the agent's private information signal. Theoretical models have found that cascades result in poor information aggregation, inaccurate decisions, and fragility of mass...

The thoughts and behaviors of financial market participants depend upon adopted cultural traits, including information signals, beliefs, strategies, and folk economic models. Financial traits compete to survive in the human population, and are modified in the process of being transmitted from...