We study how job-seekers share information about jobs within their social network, and its implications for firms. We randomly increase the amount of competition for a job and find that job-seekers are: (i) less likely to share information about the job with their peers; and (ii) choose to...

This paper investigates opinion dynamics and social influence in directed communication networks. We study the theoretical properties of a boundedly rational model of opinion formation in which individuals aggregate the information they receive from their neighbors by using weights that are a...

We survey the literature on the economic consequences of the structure of social networks. We develop a taxonomy of "macro" and "micro" characteristics of social interaction networks and discuss both the theoretical and empirical findings concerning the role of those characteristics in...

Peer influence through word-of-mouth (WOM) plays an important role in many information systems but identification of causal effects is challenging. We identify causal WOM effects in the empirical setting of game adoption in a social network for gamers by exploiting differences in individuals’...

We provide an overview and synthesis of the literature on how social networks influence behaviors, with a focus on diffusion. We discuss some highlights from the empirical literature on the impact of networks on behaviors and diffusion. We also discuss some of the more prominent models of...

In this chapter, I provide an overview of research on social networks and their role in shaping behavior and economic outcomes. I include discussion of empirical and theoretical analyses of the role of social networks in markets and exchange, learning and diffusion, and network games. I also...

Among residents of an informal housing area in Cairo, we examine how dictator giving varies by the social distance between subjects - friend versus stranger - and by the anonymity of the dictator. While giving to strangers is high under anonymity, we find - consistent with Leider et al. (2009) -...

Among residents of an informal housing area in Cairo, we examine how dictator giving varies by the social distance between subjects - friend versus stranger - and by the anonymity of the dictator. While giving to strangers is high under anonymity, we find - consistent with Leider et al. (2009) -...

The 'friendship paradox' (Feld1991) refers to the fact that, on average, people have strictly fewer friends than their friends have. I show that this over-sampling of the most popular people amplifies behaviors that involve complementarities. People with more friends experience greater...

The perfectly competitive market - a hypothetical situation free of market failure - is the basis for the two fundamental welfare theorems, and an important benchmark for economic theory. The radical abstractions of this idea, however, make its full implications hard to grasp. I address this...