Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Limited depth of reasoning and failure of cascade formation in the laboratory

Contents:

Author Info

  • Kübler, Dorothea
  • Weizsäcker, Georg

Abstract

We examine the robustness of information cascades in laboratory experiments. Apart from the situation in which each player can obtain a signal for free (as in the experiment by Anderson and Holt, 1997, American Economic Review), the case of costly signals is studied where players decide whether to obtain private information or not, at a small but positive cost. In the equilibrium of this game, only the first player buys a signal and chooses an urn based on this information whereas all following players do not buy a signal and herd behind the first player. The experimental results show that too many signals are bought and the equilibrium prediction performs poorly. To explain these observations, the depth of the subjects' reasoning process is estimated, using a statistical error-rate model. Allowing for different error rates on different levels of reasoning, we find that the subjects' inferences become significantly more noisy on higher levels of the thought process, and that only very short chains of reasoning are applied by the subjects. --

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/62724/1/723917450.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes in its series SFB 373 Discussion Papers with number 2001,3.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2000
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:zbw:sfb373:20013

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Spandauer Str. 1,10178 Berlin
Phone: +49-30-2093-5708
Fax: +49-30-2093-5617
Email:
Web page: http://www.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Stahl, Dale II & Wilson, Paul W., 1994. "Experimental evidence on players' models of other players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 309-327, December.
  2. Huck, Steffen & Oechssler, Jorg, 2000. "Informational cascades in the laboratory: Do they occur for the right reasons?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 661-671, December.
  3. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
  4. Costa-Gomes, Miguel & Crawford, Vincent P & Broseta, Bruno, 2001. "Cognition and Behavior in Normal-Form Games: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1193-1235, September.
  5. Simon P. Anderson & Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 1999. "The Logit Equilibrium: A Perspective on Intuitive Behavioral Anomalies," Virginia Economics Online Papers 332, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
  6. Sefton, Martin & Yavas, Abdullah, 1996. "Abreu-Matsushima Mechanisms: Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 280-302, October.
  7. Richard Mckelvey & Thomas Palfrey, 1998. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Extensive Form Games," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 9-41, June.
  8. R. McKelvey & T. Palfrey, 2010. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Levine's Working Paper Archive 510, David K. Levine.
  9. Sushil Bikhchandani & David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 1998. "Learning from the Behavior of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 151-170, Summer.
  10. Banerjee, Abhijit V, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817, August.
  11. Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A., 2004. "A model of noisy introspection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 365-382, February.
  12. Ho, Teck-Hua & Camerer, Colin & Weigelt, Keith, 1998. "Iterated Dominance and Iterated Best Response in Experimental "p-Beauty Contests."," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 947-69, September.
  13. Sushil Bikhchandani & David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 2010. "A theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom and cultural change as informational Cascades," Levine's Working Paper Archive 1193, David K. Levine.
  14. Anderson, Lisa R & Holt, Charles A, 1997. "Information Cascades in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 847-62, December.
  15. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-26, December.
  16. Kraemer, Carlo & Nöth, Markus & Weber, Martin, 2000. "Information Aggregation with Costly Information and Random Ordering: Experimental Evidence," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 00-35, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim & Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler, 2004. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets - An Internet Experiment," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 55, Econometric Society.
  2. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Christoph March & Sebastian Krügel, 2012. ""Do We Follow Others when We Should? A Simple Test of Rational Expectations": Comment," Jena Economic Research Papers 2012-006, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics.
  3. Luca Corazzini & Ben Greiner, 2005. "Herding, Social Preferences and (Non-) Conformity," Working Paper Series in Economics 21, University of Cologne, Department of Economics, revised 24 Jan 2007.
  4. Jacob K. Goeree & Thomas R. Palfrey & Brian W. Rogers & Richard D. McKelvey, 2006. "Self-Correcting Information Cascades," Levine's Bibliography 321307000000000211, UCLA Department of Economics.
  5. Jonathan E. Alevy & Michael S. Haigh & John List, 2006. "Information Cascades: Evidence from An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," NBER Working Papers 12767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Jacob K Goeree & Charles A Holt, 2004. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," Levine's Working Paper Archive 618897000000000900, David K. Levine.
  7. Shachat, Jason & Srivinasan, Anand, 2011. "Informational price cascades and non-aggregation of asymmetric information in experimental asset markets," MPRA Paper 30308, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  8. Drehmann, Mathias & Oechssler, Jorg & Roider, Andreas, 2007. "Herding with and without payoff externalities -- an internet experiment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 391-415, April.
  9. Bogaçhan Çelen & Shachar Kariv, 2004. "Distinguishing Informational Cascades from Herd Behavior in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 484-498, June.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:sfb373:20013

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - German National Library of Economics).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.