American Economic Review Vol. 109 No. 8 2019
Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Attention
Abstract
We consider a decision maker (DM) who, before taking an action, seeks information by allocating her limited attention dynamically over different news sources that are biased toward alternative actions. Endogenous choice of information generates rich dynamics: the chosen news source either reinforces or weakens the prior, shaping subsequent attention choices, belief updating, and the final action. The DM adopts a learning strategy biased toward the current belief when the belief is extreme and against that belief when it is moderate. Applied to consumption of news media, observed behavior exhibits an “ echo-chamber” effect for partisan voters and a novel “ anti-echo-chamber” effect for moderates.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20171000
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 2993-3029
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref