Published July 18, 2018
| Version Accepted Version
Working Paper
Open
Fake News, Information Herds, Cascades, and Economic Knowledge
Abstract
The paper addresses the issue of "fake news" through a well-known and widely studied experiment that illustrates possible uses of economics and game theory for understanding the phenomenon. Public news is viewed as an aggregation of decentralized pieces of valuable information about complex events. Success of news systems rests on accumulated investment in trust in news sources. By contrast, fake news involves cases in which news source reliability is not known. The experiment demonstrates how fake news can destroy both the investment in trust and also the benefits that successful news systems provide.
Additional Information
The insights of David Grether and the help of B. Atsavapranee, are gratefully acknowledged. All experimental programs were designed by Travis Maron. The financial support of the John Templeton Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.Attached Files
Accepted Version - SSRN-id3217603.pdf
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SSRN-id3217603.pdf
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Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 113356
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220209-220523090
Related works
- Describes
- https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20220209-296325000 (URL)
Funding
- John Templeton Foundation
Dates
- Created
-
2022-02-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-06-01Created from EPrint's last_modified field
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 1442