http://localhost/expertvoices/wordpress This is a supplemental blog for a course which will cover how the social, technological, and natural worlds are connected, and how the study of networks sheds light on these connections. Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:55:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en articles : http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/132511164.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828706/posts According to the article, at the end of 2001, the price of real estate, especially that of apartment, has been skyrocketed in some metropolitan area of Seoul, South Korea. That area is called Gangnam district ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2768 In class, we discussed information cascade in terms of economic behavior of the mass. An information cascade is a situation in which every subsequent actor, based on the observations of others, makes the same choice independent of his/her private signal. This may result in erroneous mass behavior. ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2767 We're starting to cover in class the topic of network effects, where goods consumed have positive externalities (e.g. the more people have cellphones, the more utility the people buying them will enjoy). Of course, negative externalities exist as well: imagine a river, a factory upstream and a farm downstream. In ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2766 As a company built on search, it comes as no surprise that Google is heavily dependent on keyword-based advertising. A large chunk of Google’s revenue is generated from clicks on its search ads. Recently, a report from researcher comScore showed that Google’s search-related ads are experiencing a decline in the ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2765 A very interesting question was asked in a previous lecture about whether or not people can see past choices. According to the results of an experimental study based on the Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welch (BHW) model, many individuals do not in fact recognize cascade behaviors of others. The BHW model ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2764   Robert Shiller recently made an application about the incompleteness of information cascades and its dangerous attributes to the recent housing bubble. But what if the information that cascades is more opinionated than informational? An example of this is the critic industry. How many of us have seen a movie or ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2761 http://www.ohio.com/editorial/commentary/16246947.html?page=1&c=y The Akron Beacon Journal discusses the recent housing bubble and the failure of economic experts to recognize the problem. They quote Alan Greenspan's autobiography, saying, "I'd come to realize that we'd never be able to identify irrational exuberance with certainty, much less act on it, until after the fact". ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2760 According to class material, Web search was initially supposed to only help users find relevant and useful pages. However, due to the exponential growth of the Web, it is impossible to prevent search engines from turning into profitable money-making machines. For search sites like Google, this industry makes up most ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2759 “’Q. Why would I want to join an inexplicable mob? A. Tons of other people are doing it.’” --Bill Wasik, “My Crowd” Harpers Magazine. Mar 2006, Vol. 312 Issue 1870, p56-66. A monument both to the potential vacuousness of “information” cascades and the way individuals and other actors learn to coopt the social ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2758 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/business/02view.html?_r=1&oref=slogin This article is about some of the reasons the experts did not detect the housing bubble before it happened.  Much of what happened was because many of the top experts, including Alan Greenspan, thought the housing bubble was not going to be a bubble, but a ”froth".  This is a ... http://nsdl.library.cornell.edu/websites/expertvoices/info2040/archives/2757