Online connectivity and other technologies provide academic researchers and practitioners with unprecedented access to data on social interactions between consumers in the process of adoption and consumption of products, services, and ideas. In many cases, the social connections that can be...

This paper presents a model of strategic network formation with local complementarities in effort levels and positive local externalities. Results are obtained for a general class of payoff functions, which subsumes the linear-quadratic specification frequently used in the literature. We assume...

We survey the recent, fast-growing literature on peer effects in networks. An important recurring theme is that the causal identification of peer effects depends on the structure of the network itself. In the absence of correlated effects, the reflection problem is generally solved by network...

This paper presents a simple model of strategic network formation with local complementarities in effort levels and positive local externalities for a general class of payoff functions. Results are obtained for one-sided and two-sided link creation. In both cases (pairwise) Nash equilibrium...

Publicly traded firms in the U.S. typically determine C.E.O. compensation by benchmarking the pay of their C.E.O.s against the pay of C.E.O.s in “peer” firms. The naming of particular peer companies by individual firms constitutes a supra-firm relational structure (network) in which an...

We survey the recent, fast-growing literature on peer effects in networks. An important recurring theme is that the causal identification of peer effects depends on the structure of the network itself. In the absence of correlated effects, the reflection problem is generally solved by network...

We examine friendships and study partnerships among university students over several years. At the aggregate level, connections increase over time, but homophily on gender and ethnicity is relatively constant across time, university residences, and different network layers. At the individual...