Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/60938 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Staff Report No. 453
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY
Abstract: 
The recent nonexperimental literature on social learning focuses on showing that observational learning exists, that is, individuals do indeed draw inferences by observing the actions of others. We take this literature a step further by analyzing whether individuals are Bayesian social learners. We use data from the Associated Press (AP) U.S. College Football Poll, a weekly subjective ranking of the top twenty-five teams. The voters' aggregate rankings are available each week prior to when voters have to update their individual rankings, so voters can potentially learn from their peers. We find that peer rankings: 1) are informative, as conditioning on them improves the accuracy of our estimated Bayesian posterior rankings in a nontrivial way, and 2) influence the way voters adjust their rankings, but the influence is less than the Bayesian amount. Voters' revisions are closer to Bayesian when the ranked team loses as compared to when it wins, which we attribute to losses being less ambiguous and more salient signals. We find evidence of significant voter heterogeneity, and that voters are less responsive to peer rankings after they have been on the poll a few years. We interpret the data to imply that reputation motives cause voters to 'conform,' but not enough to overcome the overall tendency to underreact to social information, that is, to be 'stubborn.'
Subjects: 
Belief
Bayesian updating
social learning
conformity
herding
peers
JEL: 
D80
D83
D84
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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