Strategic Observational Learning

We study learning by privately informed forward-looking agents in a simple repeated-action setting of social learning. Under a symmetric signal structure, forward-looking agents behave myopically for any degrees of patience. Myopic equilibrium is unique in the class of symmetric threshold strategies, and the simplest symmetric non-monotonic strategies. If the signal structure is asymmetric and the game is infinite, there is no equilibrium in myopic strategies, for any positive degree of patience.