Social learning and peer effects in consumption

"Using box-office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000, I test the implications of a simple model of social learning in which the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers. The model predicts different box office sales dynamics depending on whether opening weekend demand is higher or lower than expected. I use a unique feature of the movie industry to identify ex-ante demand expectations: the number of screens dedicated to a movie in its opening weekend reflects the sales expectations held by profit-maximizing theater owners. Several pieces of evidence are consistent with social learning. First, sales of movies with positive surprise and negative surprise in opening weekend demand diverge over time. If a movie has better than expected appeal and therefore experiences larger than expected sales in week 1, consumers in week 2 update upward their expectations of quality, further increasing week 2 sales. Second, this divergence is small for movies for which consumers have strong priors and large for movies for which consumers have weak priors. Third, the effect of a surprise is stronger for audiences with large social network