Related papers: Bias and high-dimensional adjustment in observatio…
Scientists have been interested in estimating causal peer effects to understand how people's behaviors are affected by their network peers. However, it is well known that identification and estimation of causal peer effects are challenging…
We develop a dynamic model of discrete choice that incorporates peer effects into random consideration sets. We characterize the equilibrium behavior and study the empirical content of the model. In our setup, changes in the choices of…
It is widely believed that one's peers influence product adoption behaviors. This relationship has been linked to the number of signals a decision-maker receives in a social network. But it is unclear if these same principles hold when the…
We address the problem of using observational data to estimate peer contagion effects, the influence of treatments applied to individuals in a network on the outcomes of their neighbors. A main challenge to such estimation is that homophily…
We study the estimation of peer effects through social networks when researchers do not observe the entire network structure. Special cases include sampled networks, censored networks, and misclassified links. We assume that researchers can…
A prominent threat to causal inference about peer effects over social networks is the presence of homophily bias, that is, social influence between friends and families is entangled with common characteristics or underlying similarities…
Estimating causal effects is crucial for decision-makers in many applications, but it is particularly challenging with observational network data due to peer interactions. Many algorithms have been proposed to estimate causal effects…
In social science researches, causal inference regarding peer effects often faces significant challenges due to homophily bias and contextual confounding. For example, unmeasured health conditions (e.g., influenza) and psychological states…
Human visual attention is susceptible to social influences. In education, peer effects impact student learning, but their precise role in modulating attention remains unclear. Our experiment (N=311) demonstrates that displaying peer visual…
Social influence is the process by which individuals adapt their opinion, revise their beliefs, or change their behavior as a result of social interactions with other people. In our strongly interconnected society, social influence plays a…
We develop a general model of discrete choice that incorporates peer effects in preferences and consideration sets. We characterize the equilibrium behavior and establish conditions under which all parts of the model can be recovered from a…
I study peer effects that arise from irreversible decisions in the absence of a standard social equilibrium. I model a latent sequence of decisions in continuous time and obtain a closed-form expression for the likelihood, which allows to…
Cognitive biases are widespread in humans and animals alike, and can sometimes be reinforced by social interactions. One prime bias in judgment and decision-making is the human tendency to underestimate large quantities. Previous research…
The Linear Threshold Model is a widely used model that describes how information diffuses through a social network. According to this model, an individual adopts an idea or product after the proportion of their neighbors who have adopted it…
Convenient access to observational data enables us to learn causal effects without randomized experiments. This research direction draws increasing attention in research areas such as economics, healthcare, and education. For example, we…
We consider the problem of estimating social influence, the effect that a person's behavior has on the future behavior of their peers. The key challenge is that shared behavior between friends could be equally explained by influence or by…
High-dimensional data can be useful for causal inference by providing many confounders that may bolster the plausibility of the ignorability assumption. Propensity score methods are powerful tools for causal inference, are popular in health…
We describe semiparametric estimation and inference for causal effects using observational data from a single social network. Our asymptotic results are the first to allow for dependence of each observation on a growing number of other…
Researchers have focused on understanding how individual's behavior is influenced by the behaviors of their peers in observational studies of social networks. Identifying and estimating causal peer influence, however, is challenging due to…
We investigate peer role model influence on successful graduation from Therapeutic Communities (TCs) for substance abuse and criminal behavior. We use data from 3 TCs that kept records of exchanges of affirmations among residents and their…