Leoni, Dr Patrick (2006) Saturation Effect and Cyclical Herd Behavior. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

We analyze a sequential decision model, where in every period a new agent seeks to determine the payoff of some actions. Every agent receives a possibly uninformative signal about the payoffs, and she observes previous choices. Some actions have a saturation effect; i.e., their payoffs become zero if used repeatedly too often albeit the original payoff is recovered later. we show that in every equilibrium and for almost every quuilibrium play path, an action will trigger a cyclical herd behavior. We also show that the length of the transition phase between two consecutive herd behavior is at most the time needed to recover from the saturation effect. We thus give an alternative explanation to Kirman ( 1993) for the cyclicity of herd behavior, based on the negative externality generated by the repeat use of the same action.

Item Type:	Other
Keywords:	Herd behavior, Cycles, Saturation effects
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics, Finance and Accounting
Item ID:	448
Depositing User:	Ms Sandra Doherty
Date Deposited:	21 Nov 2006
Refereed:	No
URI:	http://www.may.ie/academic/economics/ http://ideas.repec.org/s/may/mayecw.html
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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