http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv26n4/v26n4-2.pdf
Given the discussion of information cascades in class and my interest in politics, I came across an article that highlighted the idea of majoritarianism.  In our democratic government, the idea of “majority rules” runs public policy.  So long as this type of ruling continues to exist, information cascades will continue to play a huge role […]

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/03/microsoft_yahoo_make_social_network_plays.html
http://sites.google.com/a/opensocial.org/opensocial/Home
This article shows how important online social networks have become. Some of the largest software/tech companies found it necessary to join together in an effort to minimize the differences between using most of the more popular social networking websites. Yahoo joined in the OpenSocial campaign, created by Google. OpenSocial “defines a common […]

The cover story in USA Today’s Money Section investigated the Botnet Scams that are spreading across the internet. This botnet is comprised of thousands of bots that spread viruses and spam throughout personal emails and webpages. An example used in the article is a virus that was spread following Heath ledgers death. This […]

Given our recent in class discussion of social network effects and the similarities of these topics with my interests as an ISST major, I absolutely have to comment on the post made by my classmate earlier today entitled “Information Cascades and Pop Culture” and more specifically the referenced NY Times article from Dunken J. Watt’s […]

In 1995, the two management consultants who wrote the book Discipline ordered 10,000 plus copies of their book from many small bookstores scattered across the country [1]. Likewise in 2002, David A. Vice a reporter for the Washington Post ordered 20,000 copies of his book from BarnesandNoble.com and later returned 17,500 of them[2]. The obvious […]

I found a very interesting paper by Fredrik Liljeros, et all titled “Sexual networks: implications for the transmission of sexually transmitted infections” It explains how many epidemiological models which use ordinary differential equation (ODE) to model the spread of sexually transmitted diseases ignore many important details to be able to analytically derive results from these […]

While looking over some of the academic work done on information cascades, I came across a paper by Bikchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch which seems to have been the basis or an influence on how Prof. Easley taught information cascades to us. The authors discuss High and Low signals, good and bad outcomes (here called […]

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/how-the-low-fat-low-fact-cascade-just-keeps-rolling-along/
http://www.mnp.nl/images/EEM%20paper%20WJ_revised_tcm61-31259.pdf
In class we listed various examples of information cascades and also debated whether the herd mentality was a mainly irrational blind-leading-the-blind consequence or whether it was based more on the unavoidable ‘binary mathematics’ behind informational cascades.
As irresistible it is to ascribe much significance to the mathematics behind informational cascades, one must also consider the difference […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/business/02view.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Robert Shiller wrote the article above in the NY Times earlier this month relating information cascades to the housing bubble of real estate investments. Shiller starts by criticizing economic experts and quotes Alan Greenspan as saying that he had “come to realize that we’d never be able to identify irrational exuberance with certainty, much less […]

Information cascades can cause many bubbles in markets. However, it is also the reason as to why popular culture is so difficult to predict. In an article found in the NYT Magazine – “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” by Duncan J. Watts – this topic was discussed.
It is a very common occurrence […]