http://opus.zbw-kiel.de/volltexte/2003/974/pdf/dp445.pdf

After searching for a long time for an interesting article relating to information cascades I found this. This article discusses the underlying reasoning behind mass emigration from one area to another. It takes an approach similar to the one we took in class going through the basic reasoning and the calculations in an effort to prove that these information cascades are actually rational behavior even though they can, at times seem like blind followings. The article talks about how if people from one area start emigrating somewhere, the other locals will think that the emigrants had some knowledge that they themselves don’t have about why it would be beneficial to emigrate even though their family might have lived in the same village for centuries. Thus their own signal is telling them to stay and live where their ancestors before them had, but oftentimes if enough locals have emigrated to some country they will believe that their is enough reason to leave everything behind. As you can tell this mentality will create a sort of landslide or, emigration of the masses. It usually lasts until This idea was very prevalent in the mass emigrations seen throughout history, such as those from Europe to the United States throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Also, this can be related to the recent illegal immigration problems in the United States, where immigrants from Mexico, based on the decisions of past immigrants, believing that those immigrants were more informed and thought they could have a better life, and better job in the United States, decide to immigrate illegally themselves.

There is one point in this article that I would like to disagree with, though. The decision of emigrants to move to the same country is a strong indication of an Information Cascade, but the fact that they tend to live in the same town as fellow emigrants in their new country can be explained better by their personal preferences and not because of the information cascade. Oftentimes they do not speak the language of the new country well or the country has very different customs. Therefore, they would feel much more comfortable living around others that speak the same language or have the same customs. This leads me to believe that this is not a result of the information cascade that got them to emigrate to the country in the first place. This assumption may hold for herd behavior, but not of the specific definition of an information cascade. The reason to live near fellow immigrants is almost purely a result of personal payoffs.

There is one other thing I would like to note about information cascades that does not relate to this article. I was originally looking for an article relating the rapid growth of many religions in the past, such as catholicism to information cascades, but could find nothing. It seems that many religions began, and still expand through information cascades. People make decisions to join the religion based on the belief that others that are already members of the religion know something that they do not, or are more informed. This information is taken to be knowledge of a higher being(s). This is how most religions began, through religious leaders, such as Jesus, that professed a knowledge of things that others did not know about, creating an information cascade. This can be linked to the the rapid growths in history of certain religions. Information cascades are a very interesting phenomenon and it is interesting to see all the research relating to them that closely follows what we have learned in class, dealing with all of the math and probability behind it.