Using detailed data on a cohort of young Americans who were in their late twenties and early thirties in 2008, we investigate the importance of forces different from economic incentives in nest-leaving decisions. We apply recent methods from social network econometrics to identify the importance...

The current peer review system suffers from two key problems: promotion of an in-crowd whose methods, opinions and innovations it protects; and failure to represent the opinions and interests of non-peer clients. As a result, whole disciplines orient themselves toward navel-gazing research...

We live in a time of increasing publication rates and specialization of scientific disciplines. More and more, the research community is facing the challenge of assuring the quality of research and maintaining trust in the scientific enterprise. Replication studies are necessary to detect...

The paper focuses on women's financial behaviour in their use of higher order financial services in Ghana and South Africa, inviting a gendered and social analysis of deconstructing financial behaviour. Women in South Africa are more likely to use general financial products than in Ghana, though...

We study the causal impact of network centrality on educational outcomes using field experiments in primary schools in Bangladesh. After obtaining information on friendship networks, we randomly allocate students into groups and give them individual and group assignments. We find that groups...

We study some recent developments and challenges in the empirics of the effects of social networks. We focus in particular on researchers' ability to make policy recommendations based on a standard linear econometric model. We examine the potential compatibility between this type of econometric...

There is good reason to think that non-elite programs in economics may be producing relatively more research than in the past: Research expectations have been ramped-up at non-PhD institutions and new information technologies have changed the way academic knowledge is produced and exchanged....

The aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism based on social interactions explaining why distance to jobs can have a negative impact on workers' labor-market outcomes, especially ethnic minorities. Building on Granovetter's idea that weak ties are superior to strong ties for providing...

Delinquents are embedded in a network of relationships. Social ties among delinquents are modeled by means of a graph where delinquents compete for a booty and benefit from local interactions with their neighbors. Each delinquent decides in a non-cooperative way how much delinquency effort he...

Standard economics omits the role of narratives (the stories that people tell themselves and others) when they make all kinds of decisions. Narratives play a role in understanding the environment; focusing attention; predicting events; motivating action; assigning social roles and identities;...