Related papers: Status substitution and conspicuous consumption

This paper demonstrates how reinforcement learning can explain two puzzling empirical patterns in household consumption behavior during economic downturns. I develop a model where agents use Q-learning with neural network approximation to…

We provide a detailed characterization of the optimal consumption stream for the additive habit-forming utility maximization problem, in a framework of general discrete-time incomplete markets and random endowments. This characterization…

In social network markets, the act of consumer choice in these industries is governed not just by the set of incentives described by conventional consumer demand theory, but by the choices of others in which an individual's payoff is an…

Network models are widely used to represent relational information among interacting units and the structural implications of these relations. Recently, social network studies have focused a great deal of attention on random graph models of…

We show that, with indivisible goods, the existence of competitive equilibrium fundamentally depends on agents' substitution effects, not their income effects. Our Equilibrium Existence Duality allows us to transport results on the…

To choose between two discrete goods, a consumer pays attention to only those with prices below a threshold. From these, she chooses her most preferred good. We assume consumers in a population have the same preference but may have…

In consumer search, there is a set of items. An agent has a prior over her value for each item and can pay a cost to learn the instantiation of her value. After exploring a subset of items, the agent chooses one and obtains a payoff equal…

People in the Internet era have to cope with the information overload, striving to find what they are interested in, and usually face this situation by following a limited number of sources or friends that best match their interests. A…

When modeling a social dynamics with an agent-oriented approach, researchers have to describe the structure of interactions within the population. Given the intractability of extensive network collecting, they rely on random network…

This paper develops an active sensing method to estimate the relative weight (or trust) agents place on their neighbors' information in a social network. The model used for the regression is based on the steady state equation in the linear…

This paper presents a model of network formation and public goods provision in local communities. Here, networks can sustain public good provision by spreading information about people's behaviour. I find a critical threshold in network…

Networked public goods games model scenarios in which self-interested agents decide whether or how much to invest in an action that benefits not only themselves, but also their network neighbors. Examples include vaccination, security…

To determine the welfare implications of price changes in demand data, we introduce a revealed preference relation over prices. We show that the absence of cycles in this relation characterizes a consumer who trades off the utility of…

This paper presents models and algorithms for interactive sensing in social networks where individuals act as sensors and the information exchange between individuals is exploited to optimize sensing. Social learning is used to model the…

Networks represent relationships between entities in many complex systems, spanning from online social interactions to biological cell development and brain connectivity. In many cases, relationships between entities are unambiguously…

Cultural trends and popularity cycles can be observed all around us, yet our theories of social influence and identity expression do not explain what perpetuates these complex, often unpredictable social dynamics. We propose a theory of…

As technologies are developed and constructed, designers may or may not be aware that they are embedding politics and values into their artifacts. Computer scientists operate and advance their field by building layers of abstraction into…

In this paper, we tackle the problem of innovation spreading from a modeling point of view. We consider a networked system of individuals, with a competition between two groups. We show its relation to the innovation spreading issues. We…

The outcomes of elections, product sales, and the structure of social connections are all determined by the choices individuals make when presented with a set of options, so understanding the factors that contribute to choice is crucial. Of…

We model social media as collections of users producing and consuming content. Users value consuming content, but doing so uses up their scarce attention, and hence they prefer content produced by more able users. Users also value receiving…