CANCELLED: Georg Weizsacker (Humboldt-Universität Berlin)

“An Experiment on Social Mislearning”

abstract

We investigate theories of social learning in two experiments based on simple arithmetic that isolate errors in inference from those in Bayesian updating.  In the first experiment, players move one-person-per-period and observe all predecessors’ actions. Although 75% of participants adhere to BNE in this experiment, they realize less than one-fifth of the payoff gains achievable through social learning. The second experiment differs from the first only in that players move four at a time; participants here depart dramatically from BNE, leading them to average payoffs far below those they would achieve in autarky: social learning is on average harmful.