There are many situations in which a customer's proclivity to buy the product of any firm depends not only on the classical attributes oft he product such as its price and quality, but also on who else is buying the same product. We model these situations as games in which firms compete for...

One of the drivers of green consumerism are social network externalities that are associated with buying 'green' because green consumerism is fashionable, or because of reputation effects. We analyze how the strength of this social network effect impacts green consumerism, environmental...

We study the value of price discrimination in large social networks. Recent trends in industry suggest that increasingly firms are using information about social network to offer personalized prices to individuals based upon their positions in the social network. In the presence of positive...

Does salient information on social media influence individuals' economic decisions and beliefs? Using aggregated data from Facebook and a difference-in-differences strategy, I show that individuals who are socially connected to someone affected by Hurricane Harvey are more likely to purchase...

One of the drivers of green consumerism are social network externalities that are associated with buying 'green' - because green consumerism is fashionable, or because of reputation effects. We analyze how the strength of this social network effect impacts green consumerism, environmental...

While interest in social determinants of individual behavior has led to a rich theoretical literature and many efforts to measure these influences, a mature social econometrics has yet to emerge. This chapter provides a critical overview of the identification of social interactions. We consider...

This paper studies an evolutionary model of network formation with endogenous decay, in which agents benefit both from direct and indirect connections. In addition to forming (costly) links, agents choose actions for a coordination game that determines the level of decay of each link. We address...

This paper models the dynamic process through which a large society may succeed in building up its "social capital" by establishing a stable and dense pattern of interaction among its members. In the model, agents interact according to a collection of infinitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemmas...

This paper studies network formation in settings where players are heterogeneous with respect to benefits as well as the costs of forming links. Our results demonstrate that centrality, center-sponsorship and short network diameter are robust features of equilibrium networks. We find that in a...

A fundamental question in social sciences is how trust emerges. We provide an answer which relies on the formation of social and economic relationships. We argue that behind trust lies the fact that individuals invest in connections taking into account the potential externalities networks...