This paper presents an experimental investigation of persuasion bias, a form of bounded rationality whereby agents communicating through a social network are unable to account for possible repetitions in the information they receive. The results indicate that network structure plays a...

Peer effects have figured prominently in debates on school vouchers, desegregation, ability tracking and anti-poverty programs. Compelling evidence of their existence remains scarce for plaguing endogeneity issues such as selection bias and the reflection problem. This paper is among the first...

This chapter summarizes the recent literature on peer effects in student outcomes at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Linear-in-means models find modest sized and statistically significant peer effects in test scores. But the linear-in-means model masks considerable...

This paper empirically investigates the relevance of social interaction and caste affiliation for individual awareness of financial instruments and investment behavior in India. The results of our empirical analysis, which is based on a large scale survey on saving patterns of Indians, suggest a...

The tradition of keeping written records of gift received during household ceremonies in many countries offers researchers an underutilized means of data collection for social network analysis. This paper first summarizes unique features of the gift record data that circumvent five prevailing...

This paper empirically investigates the relevance of social interaction and caste affiliation for individual awareness of financial instruments and investment behavior in India. The results of our empirical analysis, which is based on a large scale survey on saving patterns of Indians, suggest a...

This paper examines acculturational homophily in friendships of international students. Acculturation (also known as cultural assimilation) is measured by English-name usage. I use data from Renren.com, a Facebook-type social networking site based in China. The sample consists of students who...

Despite the resultant disutility, some people, in particular, the poor, are engaged in behaviors that carry social stigma. Empirical studies on stigmatized behavior are rare, largely due to the formidable challenges of collecting data on stigmatized goods and services. In this paper, we add to...

Exploiting a unique empirical setting, 1,000 vendors in 90 traditional food markets in Lima, we document that historic social ties among market founders are associated, decades later, with stricter formal (third party) enforcement of market rules, more collective action, and the greater...

The strong adverse selection that immigrants face in hosting labour markets may induce them to adopt some behaviours or signals to modify employers' beliefs. Relevant mechanisms for reaching this purpose are personal reputation; exploiting ethnic networks deeply-rooted in the hosting country;...