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Behavioral Economics Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economic Theory

Carlos Oyarzun

Selected Works

Social learning

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics

Imitation In Heterogeneous Populations, Jonas Hedlund, Carlos Oyarzun Apr 2018

Imitation In Heterogeneous Populations, Jonas Hedlund, Carlos Oyarzun

Carlos Oyarzun

Abstract We study a boundedly rational model of imitation when payoff distributions of actions differ across types of individuals. Individuals observe others' actions and payoffs, and a comparison signal. Two possible inefficiencies may arise: (i) uniform adoption, i.e., all individuals choose the action that is optimal for one type but sub-optimal for the other, or (ii) dual incomplete learning, i.e., only a fraction of each type chooses its optimal action. Which one occurs depends on the composition of the population and how critical the choice is for different types of individuals. In an application, we show that a monopolist serving …

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Monotone Imitation, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf Dec 2008

Monotone Imitation, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf

Carlos Oyarzun

We analyze the social learning process of a group of individuals who have limited information about the payoff distributions of each action. We say that a behavioral rule is first-order monotone (FOM) if the number of individuals who play actions with first-order stochastic dominant payoff distributions is expected to increase in any environment. We provide a characterization of FOM rules. Both Imitate if Better and Schlag’s (J Econ Theory 78:130-156, 1998) Proportional Imitation rule are FOM. No FOM rule is dominant in the sense of having the best performance in every environment.

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