IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ofr/discus/17-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Flows, the Accuracy of Opinions, and Crashes in a Dynamic Network

Author

Listed:
  • Phillip Monin

    (Office of Financial Research)

  • Richard Bookstaber

    (University of California)

Abstract

Markets coordinate the flow of information in the economy, aggregating it through the price mechanism. We develop a dynamic model of information transmission and aggregation in financial and other social networks in which continued membership in the network is contingent on the accuracy of opinions. Agents have opinions about a state of the world and form links to others in a directed fashion probabilistically. Agents update their opinions by averaging those of their connections, weighted by how long their connections have been in the system. Agents survive or die based on how far their opinions are from the true state. In contrast to the results in the extant literature on DeGroot learning, we show through simulations that for some parameterizations the model cycles stochastically between periods of high connectivity, in which agents arrive at a consensus opinion close to the state, and periods of low connectivity in which agents’ opinions are widely dispersed. We add varying degrees of homophily through a model parameter called tribal preference and find that crash frequency is decreasing in the degree of homophily. Our results suggest that the information aggregation function of markets can fail solely because of the dynamics of information flows, irrespective of shocks or news.

Suggested Citation

  • Phillip Monin & Richard Bookstaber, 2017. "Information Flows, the Accuracy of Opinions, and Crashes in a Dynamic Network," Staff Discussion Papers 17-01, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
  • Handle: RePEc:ofr:discus:17-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.financialresearch.gov/staff-discussion-papers/files/OFRsdp-2017-01_Information-Flows-in-a-Dynamic-Network.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu & Kenneth Rogoff & Michael Woodford, 2010. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number acem09-1.
    2. Acemoglu, Daron & Rogoff, Kenneth & Woodford, Michael (ed.), 2010. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226002095, July.
    3. Mathias Dewatripont & Lars Peter Hansen & Stephen Turnovsky, 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, Eighth World Congress," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/176002, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Mathias Staudigl, 2013. "Co-evolutionary dynamics and Bayesian interaction games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(1), pages 179-210, February.
    5. Benjamin Golub & Matthew O. Jackson, 2012. "How Homophily Affects the Speed of Learning and Best-Response Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1287-1338.
    6. Peter M. DeMarzo & Dimitri Vayanos & Jeffrey Zwiebel, 2003. "Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Unidimensional Opinions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 909-968.
    7. John Geanakoplos, 2009. "The Leverage Cycle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1715R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 2010.
    8. Venkatesh Bala & Sanjeev Goyal, 2000. "A Noncooperative Model of Network Formation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1181-1230, September.
    9. Rainer Hegselmann & Ulrich Krause, 2002. "Opinion Dynamics and Bounded Confidence Models, Analysis and Simulation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 5(3), pages 1-2.
    10. Daron Acemoglu & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2011. "Opinion Dynamics and Learning in Social Networks," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 3-49, March.
    11. John Geanakoplos, 2010. "The Leverage Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 1-65, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Arun G. Chandrasekhar & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Pablo Xandri, 2015. "Testing Models of Social Learning on Networks: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field," NBER Working Papers 21468, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jackson, Matthew O. & Watts, Alison, 2002. "The Evolution of Social and Economic Networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 265-295, October.
    14. Watts, Alison, 2001. "A Dynamic Model of Network Formation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 331-341, February.
    15. John Geanakoplos, 2009. "The Leverage Cycle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1715, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    16. Lorenz, Jan, 2005. "A stabilization theorem for dynamics of continuous opinions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 355(1), pages 217-223.
    17. Mathias Dewatripont & Lars Peter Hansen & Stephen Turnovsky, 2003. "Advances in economics and econometrics :theory and applications," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/9557, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    18. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers, 2007. "Meeting Strangers and Friends of Friends: How Random Are Social Networks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 890-915, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Phillip J. Monin & Richard Bookstaber, 2021. "Information flows and crashes in dynamic social networks," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 16(3), pages 471-495, July.
    2. Saki Bigio & Eduardo Zilberman, 2020. "Speculation-Driven Business Cycles," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 865, Central Bank of Chile.
    3. Arifovic, Jasmina & Eaton, B. Curtis & Walker, Graeme, 2015. "The coevolution of beliefs and networks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 46-63.
    4. Jackson, Matthew O. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Games on Networks," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    5. Hellmann, Tim & Staudigl, Mathias, 2014. "Evolution of social networks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 234(3), pages 583-596.
    6. Ioannides, Yannis M. & Soetevent, Adriaan R., 2007. "Social networking and individual outcomes beyond the mean field case," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(3-4), pages 369-390.
    7. Stefan Kerbl & Michael Sigmund, 2011. "What Drives Aggregate Credit Risk?," Financial Stability Report, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 22, pages 72-87.
    8. Christos Mavridis & Nikolas Tsakas, 2021. "Social Capital, Communication Channels and Opinion Formation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(4), pages 635-678, May.
    9. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers & Yves Zenou, 2016. "Networks: An Economic Perspective," Papers 1608.07901, arXiv.org.
    10. John Geanakoplos & Robert Axtell & J. Doyne Farmer & Peter Howitt & Benjamin Conlee & Jonathan Goldstein & Matthew Hendrey & Nathan M. Palmer & Chun-Yi Yang, 2012. "Getting at Systemic Risk via an Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 53-58, May.
    11. Buechel, Berno & Hellmann, Tim & Klößner, Stefan, 2015. "Opinion dynamics and wisdom under conformity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 240-257.
    12. Tobias Adrian & Adam B. Ashcraft & Hayley Boesky & Zoltan Pozsar, 2013. "Shadow banking," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 1-16.
      • Tobias Adrian & Adam B. Ashcraft & Hayley Boesky & Zoltan Pozsar, 2010. "Shadow banking," Staff Reports 458, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    13. Ahnert, Toni & Anand, Kartik & Gai, Prasanna & Chapman, James, 2015. "Safe, or not safe? Covered bonds and Bank Fragility," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112875, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Isabel Melguizo, 2019. "Homophily and the Persistence of Disagreement," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1400-1424.
    15. Andreea Minca & Johannes Wissel, 2020. "Dynamic Leveraging–Deleveraging Games," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(1), pages 93-114, January.
    16. Michel Grabisch & Agnieszka Rusinowska, 2020. "A Survey on Nonstrategic Models of Opinion Dynamics," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-29, December.
    17. Ionel Popescu & Tushar Vaidya, 2019. "Averaging plus Learning Models and Their Asymptotics," Papers 1904.08131, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    18. Michel Grabisch & Antoine Mandel & Agnieszka Rusinowska & Emily Tanimura, 2015. "Strategic influence in social networks," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01158168, HAL.
    19. Förster, Manuel & Mauleon, Ana & Vannetelbosch, Vincent J., 2016. "Trust and manipulation in social networks," Network Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 216-243, June.
    20. Eger, Steffen, 2016. "Opinion dynamics and wisdom under out-group discrimination," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 97-107.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social networks; DeGroot learning; dynamic network formation; information transmission; nonlinear dynamical systems; crashes;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ofr:discus:17-01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gregory Feldberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ofrgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.