We study the nature of peer effects in the market for new cell phones. Our analysis builds on de-identified data from Facebook that combine information on social networks with information on users' cell phone models. To identify peer effects, we use variation in friends' new phone acquisitions...

We provide new theory and evidence on the role of consumption access in understanding the agglomeration of economic activity. We combine smartphone data that records user location every 5 minutes of the day with economic census data on the location of service-sector establishments to measure...

We develop a revealed preference test for optimal acquisition of costly information. The test encompasses models of rational inattention, sequential signal processing, and search. We provide limits on the extent to which attention costs can be recovered from choice data. We experimentally elicit...

If time and effort are required to accurately ascertain the lifetime value of energy efficiency for a durable good, consumers might rationally ignore energy efficiency. This paper argues that such inattention may be rational in the market for automobiles and home appliances. To do so, it...

Revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent's observed actions. Normative preferences represent the agent's actual interests. It sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences. But there are many cases where this assumption...

When optimizing consumption-savings decisions is costly, people may instead rely on quick-fixes, simple policy functions that avoid these costs. We introduce a model of quick-fixing. To study it empirically, we field a novel survey that measures households' consumption policy functions in...

I find that firms with more than 50 percent of foreign ownership introduce on average more than twice as many more new varieties of goods as private domestic firms. Advantages in productivity account for 32 to 62 percent of the difference in the number and sales of new varieties, while...

In developing economies, mobile-linked services have the potential to significantly reduce transaction costs and provide a truly new conduit that could be used to facilitate the flow of savings into banks. We test this premise by introducing a product that permits Sri Lankan households to...

The effective governance of local public services depends critically on the civic engagement of local citizens. However, recent efforts to promote effective citizen oversight of the public-sector services in developing countries have had mixed results. This study discusses and evaluates a...

We conduct a large-scale field experiment to study competitive price discrimination in a duopoly market with two rival movie theaters. The firms use mobile targeting to offer different prices based on location and past consumer activity. A novel feature of our experiment is that we test a range...