In this paper we examine the importance of local spillovers such as network externalities and learning from others in the diffusion of home computers using data on 110,000 U.S. households in 1997. Controlling for many individual characteristics, we find that people are more likely to buy their...

This paper introduces a new cost dataset for a commercial aircraft firm and uses this data to analyze the dynamics of learning in commercial aircraft production. This dataset is found to be inconsistent with the simple learning hypothesis, and particularly the prediction that a firm's unit cost...

Personal experiences of economic outcomes, from global financial crises to individual-level job losses, can shape individual beliefs, risk attitudes, and choices for years to come. A growing literature on experience effects shows that individuals act as if past outcomes that they experienced...

We survey work using Bayesian learning in macroeconomics, highlighting common themes and new directions. First, we present many of the common types of learning problems agents face---signal extraction problems---and trace out their effects on macro aggregates, in different strategic settings....

Many governments have engaged in policy experimentation in various forms to resolve uncertainty and facilitate learning. However, little is understood about the characteristics of policy experimentation, and how the structure of experimentation may affect policy learning and policy outcomes. We...

An information cascade is a situation in which an agent who observes others chooses the same action irrespective of the value of the agent's private information signal. Theoretical models have found that cascades result in poor information aggregation, inaccurate decisions, and fragility of mass...

This article establishes four key findings of the growing literature on experience effects in finance: (1) the long-lasting imprint of past experiences on beliefs and risk taking, (2) recency effects, (3) the domain-specificity of experience effects, and (4) imperviousness to information that is...

We compare how well agents aggregate information in two repeated social learning environments. In the first setting agents have access to a public data set. In the second they have access to the same data, and also to the past actions of others. Despite the fact that actions contain no...

Forecasts of professional forecasters are anomalous: they are biased, forecast errors are autocorrelated, and forecast revisions predict forecast errors. Sticky or noisy information models seem like unlikely explanations for these anomalies: professional forecasters pay attention constantly and...

We estimate the impact of district-level schooling mode (in-person versus hybrid or distance learning) on test scores. We combine Spring 2021 state standardized test score data with comprehensive data on schooling in the 2020-21 school year across 12 states. We find that pass rates declined...