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Rational Herds:
Economic Models of Social Learning Christophe P. Chamley |
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Penguins jumping off a
cliff, economic forecasters predicting a recovery in the business cycle,
financial advisors for the stock market speculating against a currency, and
farmers using new seeds in The properties of
social learning depend on the context in which learning and actions take
place. Each chapter is devoted to a separate issue: Individuals learn from
the observations of actions, from the outcomes of these actions, and from
what others say. They may delay or make an immediate decision; they may
compete against others or gain from cooperation; they make decisions about
capital investment, crop choices, and financial investments. The book
highlights the similarities and the differences between the various cases. A
recurrent theme is that society may learn more if individuals are less than
perfectly rational in their interpretation of others' behavior. Christophe Chamley is Professor of
Economics at Boston University and a Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris. He had also held teaching
or visiting positions at Yale Universities, the Hoover Institution, the World
Bank, Universidad Carlos III (Madrid), the Universite'
Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg), and MIT. Professor Chamley's
research had appeared in the leading journals of economics, including the American
Economics Review, Econometrica, the Journal
of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the
Review of Economic Studies. He was named a Fellow of the Economic
Society in 1995. His research interests continue to focus on the economics of
information, theoretical macro-economics, monetary economics, public
economics, and public economic history. Professor Chamley
received his doctorate from |
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