<Li> The adoption rate of drought - resistant hybrid seed corn during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl was slow despite its significant improvement over the previously available seed corn . Researchers at Iowa State University were interested in understanding the public's hesitation to the adoption of this significantly improved technology . After conducting 259 interviews with farmers it was observed that the slow rate of adoption was due to how the farmers valued the opinion of their friends and neighbors instead of the word of a salesman . See for the original report . </Li> <P> In addition to the examples above, Information Cascades have been shown to exist in several empirical studies . Perhaps the best example, given above, is . Participants stood in a line behind an urn which had balls of different colors . Sequentially, participants would pick a ball out of the urn, looks at it, and then places it back into the urn . The agent then voices their opinion of which color of balls (red or blue) there is a majority of in the urn for the rest of the participants to hear . Participants get a monetary reward if they guess correctly, forcing the concept of rationality . </P> <P> Other examples include </P> <Ul> <Li> De Vany and Walls create a statistical model of information cascades where an action is required . They apply this model to the actions people take to go see a movie that has come out at the theatre . De Vany and Walls validate their model on this data, finding a similar Pareto distribution of revenue for different movies . </Li> <Li> Walden and Browne also adopt the original Information Cascade model, here into an operational model more practical for real world studies, which allows for analysis based on observed variables . Walden and Browne test their model on data about adoption of new technologies by businesses, finding support for their hypothesis that information cascades play a role in this adoption </Li> </Ul>

The game theoretic diffusion model of cascades assumes rationality