IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rneart/v12y2014i4p33n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Imitating the Most Successful Neighbor in Social Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Tsakas Nikolas

    () (Department of Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid 126, 28903, Getafe, Spain)

Abstract

We study a model of observational learning in a set of agents who are connected through a social network. The agents face identical decision problems under uncertainty and update their choices myopically, imitating the choice of their most successful neighbor. We show that in finite networks, regardless of the network structure, the population converges to a monomorphic steady state, i.e., one at which every agent chooses the same action, and it cannot be predicted which this action will be. In arbitrarily large networks with bounded neighborhoods, an action is diffused to the whole population either if it is the only one initially chosen by a non-negligible share of the population, or if the payoffs satisfy a sufficient condition. Without the assumption of bounded neighborhoods, (i) an action can survive even if only one agent chooses it initially, and (ii) there may exist steady states that are not monomorphic.

Suggested Citation

  • Tsakas Nikolas, 2014. "Imitating the Most Successful Neighbor in Social Networks," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(4), pages 1-33, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rneart:v:12:y:2014:i:4:p:33:n:4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/rne.2013.12.issue-4/rne-2013-0119/rne-2013-0119.xml?format=INT
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schlag, Karl H., 1998. "Why Imitate, and If So, How?, : A Boundedly Rational Approach to Multi-armed Bandits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 130-156, January.
    2. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 1998. "The Theory of Learning in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061945, September.
    3. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Tsakas, Nikolas, 2017. "Diffusion by imitation: The importance of targeting agents," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 118-151.
    2. Nikolas Tsakas, 2014. "Optimal influence under observational learning," Gecomplexity Discussion Paper Series 4, Action IS1104 "The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation", revised Nov 2014.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tsakas, Nikolas, 2012. "Naive learning in social networks: Imitating the most successful neighbor," MPRA Paper 37796, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Jonas Hedlund & Carlos Oyarzun, 2018. "Imitation in heterogeneous populations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 937-973, June.
    3. Waters, George A., 2009. "Chaos in the cobweb model with a new learning dynamic," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1201-1216, June.
    4. Apesteguia, Jose & Huck, Steffen & Oechssler, Jorg, 2007. "Imitation--theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 217-235, September.
    5. Tsakas, Nikolas, 2017. "Diffusion by imitation: The importance of targeting agents," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 118-151.
    6. Antonio Morales, 2005. "On the Role of the Group Composition for Achieving Optimality," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 387-397, July.
    7. Dimant, Eugen, 2019. "Contagion of pro- and anti-social behavior among peers and the role of social proximity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 66-88.
    8. Christoph March, 2011. "Adaptive social learning," Working Papers halshs-00572528, HAL.
    9. Mark Armstrong & Steffen Huck, 2010. "Behavioral Economics as Applied to Firms: A Primer," CESifo Working Paper Series 2937, CESifo.
    10. 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.
    11. Fudenberg, Drew & Imhof, Lorens A., 2006. "Imitation processes with small mutations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 251-262, November.
    12. Mohlin, Erik & Östling, Robert & Wang, Joseph Tao-yi, 2020. "Learning by similarity-weighted imitation in winner-takes-all games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 225-245.
    13. Edward Cartwright, 2002. "Learning to play approximate Nash equilibria in games with many players," Levine's Working Paper Archive 506439000000000070, David K. Levine.
    14. Banerjee, Abhijit & Fudenberg, Drew, 2004. "Word-of-mouth learning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-22, January.
    15. Weibull, Jorgen W., 1998. "Evolution, rationality and equilibrium in games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 641-649, May.
    16. Schipper, Burkhard C., 2009. "Imitators and optimizers in Cournot oligopoly," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 1981-1990, December.
    17. Drew Fudenberg, 2006. "Advancing Beyond Advances in Behavioral Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 694-711, September.
    18. Dai Zusai, 2018. "Evolutionary dynamics in heterogeneous populations: a general framework for an arbitrary type distribution," Papers 1805.04897, arXiv.org, revised May 2019.
    19. Hopkins, Ed, 1999. "A Note on Best Response Dynamics," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 138-150, October.
    20. Wolpert, David H., 2010. "Why income comparison is rational," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 458-474, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:rneart:v:12:y:2014:i:4:p:33:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Peter Golla). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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 CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service 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.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.