Irreversible investment and the value of information gathering

This note develops a model in which a firm has to decide whether to undertake an irreversible investment. The firm has the option to delay it's decision in an effort to observe the actions of other firms. It is shown that a problem, akin to the herding phenomenon also applies, despite the endogenous time framework. In the context of an investment decision this manifests itself as the failure of a positive-payoff project to be undertaken. The most novel finding is that attempts to overcome this difficulty by further information gathering will, as a side effect, generate additional delay which may be enough to offset the gains of any new information

Controlling the Herd: Applications of Herding Theory

The literature on informational cascades and herding theory has for a decade focused on the externality and suboptimal outcomes generated from decision-making when spaces are coarser than private information spaces. Much of the output has therefore been positive, not normative. This paper redresses this imbalance by detailing several direct applications for marketing and business arising from herding theory. We see that business practices such as encouraging early sales, or selling to groups rather than individual customers, can be justified theoretically by direct application of herding theory

Optimizing information in the herd : guinea pigs, profits, and welfare

Herding arises when an agent's private information is swamped by public information in what M. O. Jackson and E. Kalai (1997, Games Econ. Behavior21, 102–134) call a recurring game. The agent will fail to reveal his own information and will follow the actions of his predecessor and, as a result, useful information is lost, which might have highlighted a better choice for later decision-makers. This paper evaluates the strategy of forcing a subset of agents to make their decision early from the perspective of a social planner, and a firm with a valuable or valueless product. Promotional activity by firms can be explained as an attempt to overcome the herd externality and maximize sales

Social Network Theory, Broadband and the World Wide Web

This paper aims to predict some possible futures for the World Wide Web based on several key network parameters: size, complexity, cost and increasing connection speed thorough the uptake of broadband technology. This is done through the production of a taxonomy specifically evaluating the stability properties of the fully-connected star and complete networks, based on the Jackson and Wolinsky (1996) connections model modified to incorporate complexity concerns. We find that when connection speeds are low neither the star nor complete networks are stable, and when connection speeds are high the star network is usually stable, while the complete network is never stable. For intermediate speed levels much depends upon the other parameters. Under plausible assumptions about the future, we find that the Web may be increasingly dominated by a single intermediate site, perhaps best described as a search engine

Irreversible investment and the value of information gathering

This note develops a model in which a firm has to decide whether to undertake an irreversible investment. The firm has the option to delay it's decision in an effort to observe the actions of other firms. It is shown that a problem, akin to the herding phenomenon also applies, despite the endogenous time framework. In the context of an investment decision this manifests itself as the failure of a positive-payoff project to be undertaken. The most novel finding is that attempts to overcome this difficulty by further information gathering will, as a side effect, generate additional delay which may be enough to offset the gains of any new information.herding

Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets: An Experimental Analysis

We are the first paper to analyse and confirm the existence and extent of rational informational herding and rational informational contrarianism in a financial market experiment, and to compare and contrast these with the equivalent irrational phenomena. In our study, subjects generally behaved according to benchmark rationality. Moreover, traders who should herd or be contrarian in theory are the significant source of both. Behavioural modifications or allowing risk aversion add little to performance and insight. JEL Classification: C91, D82, G14

Self-centred beliefs : an empirical approach

We perform an experiment designed to assess the accuracy of beliefs about distributions. The beliefs relate to behavior (mobile phone purchasing decisions, hypothetical restaurant choices), attitudes (happiness, politics) and observable characteristics (height, weight) and are typically formed through real world experiences. We find a powerful and ubiquitous bias in perceptions that is "self-centered" in the sense that an individual's beliefs about the population distribution changes with their own position in the distribution. In particular, those at extremes tend to perceive themselves as closer to the middle of the distribution than is the case. We discuss possible explanations for this bias

When herding and contrarianism foster market efficiency: a financial trading experiment

While herding has long been suspected to play a role in financial market booms and busts, theoretical analyses have struggled to identify conclusive causes for the effect. Recent theoretical work shows that informational herding is possible in a market with efficient asset prices if information is bi-polar, and contrarianism is possible with single-polar information. We present an experimental test for the validity of this theory, contrasting with all existing experiments where rational herding was theoretically impossible and subsequently not observed. Overall we observe that subjects generally behave according to theoretical predictions, yet the fit is lower for types who have the theoretical potential to herd. While herding is often not observed when predicted by theory, herding (sometimes irrational) does occur. Irrational contrarianism in particular leads observed prices to substantially differ from the efficient benchmark. Alternative models of behavior, such as risk aversion, loss aversion or error correction, either perform quite poorly or add little to our understanding

Herding and Contrarianism in a Financial Trading Experiment with Endogenous Timing

We undertook the first market trading experiments that allowed heterogeneously informed subjects to trade in endogenous time, collecting over 2000 observed trades. Subjects’ decisions were generally in line with the predictions of exogenous-time financial herding theory when that theory is adjusted to allow rational informational herding and contrarianism. While herding and contrarianism did not arise as frequently as predicted by theory, such behavior occurs in a significantly more pronounced manner than in comparable studies with exogenous timing. Types with extreme information traded earliest. Of those with more moderate information, those with signals conducive to contrarianism traded earlier than those with information conducive to herding.Herding ; Contrarianism ; Endogenous-time ; Informational Efficiency, Experiments