A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades¶
Authors: Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, Ivo Welch
Venue: Journal of Political Economy, 1992 — DOI
TL;DR¶
Foundational theoretical framework explaining how fads, fashions, and beliefs spread through sequential information cascades: when individuals use others' actions to infer information while ignoring their own private signals, widespread adoption of incorrect beliefs and practices can occur.
Notes¶
Stub page: Full ingestion pending source availability. This paper is a canonical foundational reference for the information-cascade literature widely cited in misinformation and belief-transmission research.