Tipping points among social learners: Tools from varied disciplines

Social tipping points and Earth systems dynamics

1 Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Bristol University, Bristol, UK 2 Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK 3 Institute of Hazard , Risk and Resilience, Durham University, Durham, UK 4 School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University, Durham, UK 5 Department of Mathematical Sciences, Durham University, Durham, UK 6 Durham University Business School, Dur...

Predicting social tipping points Current research and the way forward

Strategic Random Networks and Tipping Points in Social Institutions∗

This paper develops strategic foundations for a statistical model of random networks with heterogeneous expected degrees. Based on this, we show how institutional or technological changes that subtly alter the costs and indirect benefits of relationships can cause large changes in behavior and welfare. In the model, agents who value friends and friends of friends choose a level of social activi...

Social consensus and tipping points with opinion inertia

When opinions, behaviors or ideas diffuse within a population, some are invariably stickier than others. The stickier the opinion, behavior or idea, the greater is an individual’s inertia to replace it with an alternative. Here we study the effect of stickiness of opinions in a two-opinion model, where individuals change their opinion only after a certain number of consecutive encounters with t...

Ambiguous Tipping Points∗

We analyze the policy implications of aversion to Knightian uncertainty (or ambiguity) about the possibility of tipping points. We demonstrate two channels through which uncertainty aversion affects optimal policy in the general setting. The first channel relates to the policy’s effect on the probability of tipping, and the second channel to its differential impact in the preand post-tipping re...