We present a model for the diffusion of management fads and other technologies which lack clear objective evidence about their merits. The choices made by non-Bayesian adopters reflect both their own evaluations and the social influence of their peers. We show, both analytically and computationally, that the dynamics lead to outcomes that appear to be deterministic in spite of being governed by...

Many cultural traits exhibit volatile dynamics, commonly dubbed fashions or fads. Here we show that realistic fashion-like dynamics emerge spontaneously if individuals can copy others' preferences for cultural traits as well as traits themselves. We demonstrate this dynamics in simple mathematical models of the diffusion, and subsequent abandonment, of a single cultural trait which individuals ...

How does gossip spread? How do technologies diffuse within or across societies? How do fads and fashions take hold? How do people learn about job opportunities or recruit workers? All these are examples of information spread over social networks, networks of friendship, family and acquaintance. They play a role in everything from the smooth functioning of economies to the maintenance of social ...

A trivariate vector autoregression time series process, based on a present-value land price model, is used to decompose Iowa farmland prices into fundamental and non-fundamental components. A recent study, by Falk and Lee (1998), found that non-fundamental shocks are an important source of volatility in farmland prices and it was interpreted that these price movements were due to fads not specu...

We propose kinetic models for the spread of permanent innovations and transient fads by the mechanism of social reinforcement. Each individual can be in one of M + 1 states of awareness 0, 1, 2, . . . ,M , with state M corresponding to adopting an innovation. An individual with awareness k < M increases to k+1 by interacting with an adopter. Starting with a single adopter, the time for an initi...