IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v136y2021i1p621-668..html

Rational Groupthink

Author

Listed:
  • Matan Harel
  • Elchanan Mossel
  • Philipp Strack
  • Omer Tamuz

Abstract

We study how long-lived rational agents learn from repeatedly observing a private signal and each others’ actions. With normal signals, a group of any size learns more slowly than just four agents who directly observe each others’ private signals in each period. Similar results apply to general signal structures. We identify rational groupthink—in which agents ignore their private signals and choose the same action for long periods of time—as the cause of this failure of information aggregation.

Suggested Citation

  • Matan Harel & Elchanan Mossel & Philipp Strack & Omer Tamuz, 2021. "Rational Groupthink," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(1), pages 621-668.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:136:y:2021:i:1:p:621-668.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjaa026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    • Matan Harel & Elchanan Mossel & Philipp Strack & Omer Tamuz, 2014. "Rational Groupthink," Papers 1412.7172, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2020.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Qi, Dengwei, 2025. "The rates of learning with public and private signals," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    2. Mira Frick & Ryota Iijima & Yuhta Ishii, 2021. "Learning Efficiency of Multi-Agent Information Structures," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2299, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Wanying Huang & Philipp Strack & Omer Tamuz, 2024. "Learning in Repeated Interactions on Networks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(1), pages 1-27, January.
    4. Parker, Owen N. & Mui, Rachel & Bhawe, Nachiket & Semadeni, Matthew, 2022. "Insight or ignorance: How collaborative history in a workgroup fits with project type to shape performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 154-167.
    5. Keppo, Jussi & Satopää, Ville A., 2024. "Bayesian herd detection for dynamic data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 285-301.

    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:oup:qjecon:v:136:y:2021:i:1:p:621-668.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.