共同学习

Common Learning

Econometrica · 2008
被引 44
人大 A+FT50ABS 4*

中文导读

两个代理人通过观察私有信号序列学习未知参数值,当信号空间有限时,参数真值会成为近似共同知识;若信号空间可数无限,则共同学习可能失败。

Abstract

Consider two agents who learn the value of an unknown parameter by observing a sequence of private signals. The signals are independent and identically distributed across time but not necessarily across agents. We show that when each agent's signal space is finite, the agents will commonly learn the value of the parameter, that is, that the true value of the parameter will become approximate common knowledge. The essential step in this argument is to express the expectation of one agent's signals, conditional on those of the other agent, in terms of a Markov chain. This allows us to invoke a contraction mapping principle ensuring that if one agent's signals are close to those expected under a particular value of the parameter, then that agent expects the other agent's signals to be even closer to those expected under the parameter value. In contrast, if the agents' observations come from a countably infinite signal space, then this contraction mapping property fails. We show by example that common learning can fail in this case. Copyright Copyright 2008 by The Econometric Society.

共同学习信号空间马尔可夫链压缩映射