When Straight-Line Planning for Fundraising Doesn’t Work
Rich-get-richer effect seems to be most related to capitalism and free market economy, yet this phenomenon is also observed in seemingly unrelated field of economy: charity and fundraising. The Article When Straight-Line Planning Doesn’t Work written by Chris Percy, Andy Martin, and Ed Aspel provides one of most prominent examples by giving a list of recent […]
Information Cascades in Online Echo Chambers
As taught in class, an information cascade occurs when a small number of people within a network make the same decisions based off of previous people’s decisions that may or may not be accurate, but that series of same decisions causes the rest of the people to make the decide the same. In regards to the recent election, […]
How to Reach Critical Mass – Startup Marketing
A theme touched on in our discussion of network effects is that in some products, a user stands to gain more value if other people are also using that product. Examples of these products range from fax machines to operating systems to modern social web applications. Based on the model we discussed, there is in […]
Is the World in Store for More Trumps?
Recently, the American electorate surprised many both at home and abroad by electing Donald Trump to the White House. Many simply wrote off the idea that a demagogue such as Trump could force his way to the presidency in the face of intense media scrutiny, little political know-how and a political establishment all but repulsed […]
The Role of Facebook in the 2016 Election
In the days immediately following the 2016 presidential election, Facebook drew criticism over its involvement in distributing fake news articles to its users. Allegedly, this ultimately had an effect on the outcome of the election. A New York Times article investigated the reasons behind the decisions of six voters on Election Day. Many of the […]
The Great Cascade
A financial bubble can be analyzed through the lens of information cascades. An example of this is the real estate bubble that led to the Great Recession. While there are a multitude of factors that contributed to the crisis, one of the underlying causes was an information cascade. The idea that real estate, specifically mortgage […]
Informational Effects on Predicting Election Results
Before Election Day 2016, the Independent published a piece about pre-election polls. Nearly every single poll indicated that Hillary was going to win the presidency (by around 2-4 percentage points), and a select few polls showed Trump winning with 5 percentage points. These polls, however, were almost unanimously overlooked by the public. Even the LA […]
The Tipping Point for Gun Control?
In lecture we discussed tipping points in the context of network dynamics and product sales. In a nut shell, there are certain critical but unstable percentages of a population that can purchase a product. These percentages are unstable tipping points because reaching one generally results in a large increase in user percentage, while falling short […]
Are Network Effects Enough for Online Marketplaces?
Online marketplaces are some of the most economically efficient business models. They have high gross margins and do not require a lot of money to set up. Additionally, network effects help companies that have a lot of buyers. Many people view their goods superior or of higher value because of the huge number of buyers. […]
The “Tipping Point” in Crowdfunding
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/run-successful-kickstarter-campaign/ Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website where entrepreneurs propose products to sell, and rely on funding by “backers” in order to go forth in their projects. This article goes over tips to make your Kickstarter project a success, and many of the tips mentioned coincide with our discussions in class on how the “rich get […]
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