Publication: Influential opinion leaders
Loading...
Identifiers
Publication date
2014-12-01
Defense date
Advisors
Tutors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract
We present a two-stage coordination game in which early choices of experts with special
interests are observed by followers who move in the second stage. We show that the equilibrium
outcome is biased toward the experts’ interests even though followers know the distribution of
expert interests. Expert influence is fully decentralised in the sense that each individual expert
has a negligible impact. The bias in favour of experts results from a social learning effect that is
multiplied through a coordination motive. We apply our results to the onset of social movements
and to the diffusion of products with network externalities.
Description
Keywords
Regime change, Global games, Information, Revolution, Coordination, Diffusion, Networks, Cascades, Activism, Attacks
Bibliographic citation
Loeper, A., Steiner, J., & Stewart, C. (2014). Influential Opinion Leaders. The Economic Journal, 124 (581), pp. 1147-1167.