Network Architecture and the Left-Right Spectrum
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Dmitry Taubinsky
We study a model of opinion formation and analyze the link between network architecture and the “left-right spectrum” that frequently characterizes opinions and beliefs. We correct a key result of DeMarzo, Vayanos and Zwiebel (QJE, 2003) who claim that after some time, an agent’s position on a set of different issues will always be either “left” on all of those issues or “right” on all of those issues. We provide counterexamples to this claim and show that in the long-run an agent’s position can flip-flop between “left” on all issues and “right” on all issues indefinitely. However, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a stable left-right characterization of opinions to be possible in the long run. Roughly, a flip-flop will occur when agents give relatively little weight to the opinions of agents with similar political positions (including themselves). Following this intuition, we show that a simple sufficient condition is that agents become “stubborn” over time and give little weight to the opinions of others. Finally, we characterize classes of networks in which it is possible for agents to flip-flop between “left” and “right” indefinitely. We argue that qualitatively, these results are robust to alternative models of opinion formation.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Advances Article
- Strategy-Proof Compromises
- Make-or-Buy Decisions and the Manipulability of Performance Measures
- Optimal Mechanism for Selling Two Goods
- A Property of Solutions to Linear Monopoly Problems
- Interactive Epistemology and Solution Concepts for Games with Asymmetric Information
- No-Trade in the Laboratory
- Symmetry or Dynamic Consistency?
- Contributions Article
- When Two-Part Tariffs are Not Enough: Mixing with Nonlinear Pricing
- Sellers Like Clusters
- Network Architecture and the Left-Right Spectrum
- Information, Authority, and Corporate Hierarchies
- The Benefit of Mixing Private Noise into Public Information in Beauty Contest Games
- Intertemporal Bounded Rationality as Consideration Sets with Contraction Consistency
- The Survival Assumption in Intertemporal Economies
- A New Existence and Uniqueness Theorem for Continuous Games
- Multiproduct Duopoly with Vertical Differentiation
- Topics Article
- Sequential Investments, Know-How Transmission, and Optimal Organization
- Input Production Joint Venture
- On the Existence and Social Optimality of Equilibria in a Hotelling Game with Uncertain Demand and Linear-Quadratic Costs
- Stochastic Stability in Finitely Repeated Two Player Games
- Alliance Partner Choice in Markets with Vertical and Horizontal Externalities
- Transitional Dynamics in a Tullock Contest with a General Cost Function
- Strategic Choice of Preferences: the Persona Model
- Implementation of the Core in College Admissions Problems When Colleagues Matter
