Influential Opinion Leaders

Abstract

We present a two-stage coordination game in which early choices of experts with special interests are observed by followers who move in the second stage. We show that the equilibrium outcome is biased toward the experts’ interests even though followers know the distribution of expert interests. Expert influence is fully decentralised in the sense that each individual expert has a negligible impact. The bias in favour of experts results from a social learning effect that is multiplied through a coordination motive. We apply our results to the onset of social movements and to the diffusion of products with network externalities. When a large group of agents seek to coordinate their behaviour in an uncertain environment, it is common for individuals to look to better informed experts for guidance. The preferences of these experts may not coincide with those of the agents who observe their choices. In light of this conflict, do the experts’ preferences influence mass opinion and behaviour? We show that the choices of expert early movers can have a large effect on outcomes, biasing the results toward their own preferences. The effect arises even though our model features Bayesian decision-makers who