IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levrem/786969000000001075.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Design for Social Learning

Author

Listed:
  • Yeon Koo Che
  • Johannes Horner

Abstract

This paper studies the design of a recommender system for organizing social learning on a product. To improve incentives for early experimentation, the optimal design trades off fully transparent social learning by over-recommending a product (or "spamming") to a fraction of agents in the early phase of the product cycle. Under the optimal scheme, the designer spams very little about a product right after its release but gradually increases the frequency of spamming and stops it altogether when the product is deemed sufficiently unworthy of recommendation. The optimal recommender system involves randomly triggered spamming when recommendations are public -- as is often the case for product ratings -- and an information "blackout" followed by a burst of spamming when agents can choose when to check in for a recommendation. Fully transparent recommendations may become optimal if a (socially-benevolent) designer does not observe the agents’ costs of experimentation.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Yeon Koo Che & Johannes Horner, 2015. "Optimal Design for Social Learning," Levine's Bibliography 786969000000001075, UCLA Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:levrem:786969000000001075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2600931
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence M. Ausubel, 2004. "An Efficient Ascending-Bid Auction for Multiple Objects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1452-1475, December.
    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. Bergemann, Dirk & Pavan, Alessandro, 2015. "Introduction to Symposium on Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 679-701.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Ali Makhdoumi & Azarakhsh Malekian & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2017. "Fast and Slow Learning From Reviews," NBER Working Papers 24046, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Renault, Jérôme & Solan, Eilon & Vieille, Nicolas, 2017. "Optimal dynamic information provision," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 329-349.
    4. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Pavan, 2015. "Introduction to JET Symposium Issue on "Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2016, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.

    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. Le, Phuong, 2018. "Pareto optimal budgeted combinatorial auctions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), May.
    2. Shrestha, Ratna K., 2017. "Menus of price-quantity contracts for inducing the truth in environmental regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-7.
    3. Mishra, Debasis & Parkes, David C., 2007. "Ascending price Vickrey auctions for general valuations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 335-366, January.
    4. Ingebretsen Carlson, Jim, 2015. "An Approximate Auction," Working Papers 2015:19, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    5. Samuel D. Bell & Nadia A. Streletskaya, 2019. "The Random Quantity Mechanism: Laboratory and Field Tests of a Novel Cost-Revealing Procurement Mechanism," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(3), pages 899-921, July.
    6. Alessandra Casella & Adam B. Cox, 2018. "A Property Rights Approach to Temporary Work Visas," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(S1), pages 195-227.
    7. SaÄŸlam, YiÄŸit & Ho, Phuong & Daglish, Toby, 2012. "Auctioning the Digital Dividend: a Model for Spectrum," Working Paper Series 4129, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    8. Dan Levin, 2005. "Demand Reduction in Multi-Unit Auctions: Evidence from a Sportscard Field Experiment: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 467-471, March.
    9. Iftekhar, M.S. & Tisdell, J.G. & Connor, J.D., 2013. "Effects of competition on environmental water buyback auctions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 59-73.
    10. Shengwu Li, 2017. "Obviously Strategy-Proof Mechanisms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3257-3287, November.
    11. Gärtner, Dennis L. & Schmutzler, Armin, 2009. "Merger negotiations and ex-post regret," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1636-1664, July.
    12. Hitoshi Matsushima, 2015. "Connected Price Dynamics with Revealed Preferences and Auctioneer’s Discretionin VCG Combinatorial Auction (Published in the B. E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 18 (1), 2018.)," CARF F-Series CARF-F-359, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    13. Robert Kleinberg & Bo Waggoner & E. Glen Weyl, 2016. "Descending Price Optimally Coordinates Search," Papers 1603.07682, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2016.
    14. Aristotelis Boukouras & Kostas Koufopoulos, 2015. "Efficient Allocations in Economies with Asymmetric Information when the Realized Frequency of Types is Common Knowledge," Discussion Papers in Economics 15/04, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    15. John Kagel & Svetlana Pevnitskaya & Lixin Ye, 2007. "Survival auctions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 103-119, October.
    16. Breitmoser, Yves & Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian, 2019. "Obviousness around the clock," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2019-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    17. A. Talman & Zaifu Yang, 2015. "An efficient multi-item dynamic auction with budget constrained bidders," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(3), pages 769-784, August.
    18. Hitoshi Matsushima, 2011. "Efficient Combinatorial Exchanges," CARF F-Series CARF-F-258, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    19. Pär Holmberg, 2017. "Pro‐competitive Rationing in Multi‐unit Auctions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 372-395, October.
    20. Ranaldo, Angelo & Rossi, Enzo, 2016. "Uniform-price Auctions for Swiss Government Bonds: Origin and Evolution," Working Papers on Finance 1609, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cla:levrem:786969000000001075. 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: (David K. Levine). General contact details of provider: http://www.dklevine.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.